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KALEIDOSCOPIC 
LIVES. 



A COMPANION BOOK 



TO 



FRONTIER ^ INDIAJf LIFE. 



JOSEPH HENRY TAYLOR. 

Author of "Twenty Years on the Trap Line" 

"Frontier and Indian Life," Etc. 



Iltasitratedl. 



Printed and Published by the Author. 



WASHBURN, N. Dak. 
1901. 




1 



THE LIBRARY OF 

CONGRESS, 
Two Copies Received 

APR. 9 1901 

Copyright entry 
COPY B. 



.T737 



«apjjnflW 1890. 

BY 
JOSEPH HENRY TA.YIX>K. 



C ^ C C C I 



CONTENTS. 

The Hickory (Irove at Zion 1 

On the Plank Road at Chancellorsville 4 

The Two Strangers 12 

On Diverging Lines 20 

A Frontier Chronicle 48 

Blazing a Backward Trail 66 

Of Two Graves in the Black Hills 78 

The Bismarck Penitentiary 90 

From West to East ^^ 

Little Bear Woman 108 



PREFACE. 

IN the introduction of this little book the writer 
hopes to contribute his mite in affirmation of the 
oft quoted saying that "truth is stranger than 
fiction. '^ The scenes described are but realities 
in manifold diversity of human character that is 
to be seen in everyday life, though not always 
or regularly made note of by students of the 
diverse in this living, breathing mass of beings 
that come and go. Our exhibit is from a few 
turns only, as seen through the lens of a kaleido- 
scope and in the swirls, we witness the transfor- 
mation from light to shade — from moss agate to 
diamonds — from pearl to oyster shell. 

In some of the earlier editions of "Frontier and 
Indian Life," two or three of the sketches herein 
appearing were a part of that work, but after a 
more perfect conception of the facts related and 
some added information, were naturally placed 
under proper title. The author also deems it 
necessary to state that while the truthfulness of 
these strangly dramatic doings herein chronicled 
will stand without question, but for reasons 
that the reader may readily understand, in 
a few of the characters a non de plume is used, 
and that while their lineal tracing may be vague, 
the renditions are none the less perfect even 
though in masked appellation. 

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THE HICKORY CROYE AT ZION. 

FOR intense enthusiasm among the American 
people few pohtical contests excelled the 
presidential campaign of 1856. While lacking the 
boisterous good nature that enlivened the Clay 
and senior Harrison campaigns which were more 
of the adulation or hero worship order — rather 
than of discussion on the divergent principles of 
eovernment evolved in the administration of its 
affairs. The campaign of 1856, was, aside from 
local or minor issues engendered, discussed on lines 
marked out by eminent statesmen and on its edu- 
cational merits. The slavery issue had become 
paramount in the politics of the nation, and the 
question — should Afro-American slavery be ex- 
cluded from or extended to the western territories 
was the subject ever under discussion during that 
eventful year. But in the Lincoln-Breckinridge- 
Douglas and Bell campaign that followed four 
years later, argument on the slavery subject be- 
came superfluous and the measured tread of the 
newly formed wide-a-wake organizations bearing 
torches and drilled in the military step, plainly 
gave sign that a coming event were casting forth 
its ominous shadow. 

r3uring the 1856 campaign the writer, then a 



1 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

boy of tweive years of age, and residing under the 
paternal roof near the Mason and Dixon hne, be- 
came acutely interested in the public meeting^! and 
parades of the various partisans, — the whole per- 
formance being a peep into the unusual for one 
whose years had been few, — the Pierce and Scott 
campaign of four years before seeming as an im- 
perfect dream. 

About the middle of September large, printed 
posters adorned the panels of village stores or on 
finger boards at country cross roads, and with 
spread-eagle cuts announced a political meeting 
of the American or Fillmore party to be held at 
the hickory grove at Zion. Zion was the name of 
a little church some miles south of the Pennsylva- 
nia line. Prominent speakers were to be in atten- 
dance— so the posters read — and in the exhuber- 
ence of youth I joined a party of campaigners with 
flags unfurled and bunting flying, until the crowd 
of people about the grand stand in the grove at- 
tracted our attention and we become a part of the 
assemblage. 

There were fully one thousand people of both 
sexes and of all ages from the infant in its mother's 
arms, to the tottering old man who had marked 
the passing of every presidential succession since 
Washington's day. After music by the band came 
the speakers who discussed themes from various 
points of view but all bearing on the support of 
Millard Fillmore for president. Maryland's future 
senator — White — was there; J. Dixon Roman, a 
Bakimore attorney of prominence was on hand,and 



THE HICKORY GROVE AT ZION 2 

other rostrom speakers of lesser reputation made 
short addresses interspersed with applause and 
thus the afternoon hours were whiled away. By 
and by the crimson sun hung- over the distant hills 
of the Octoraro, and many rose from their seats in 
the intervals of the addresses to prepare for their 
home journeying. Scenes about the benches be- 
came uproar and families were seeking their car- 
riages, all seemingly satisfied with the program of 
the day. While confusion was reigning among 
the intending homegoers, a hack drove rapidly up 
to the grand stand, a single occupant alighted and 
the driver skurried out and away. The chairman 
announced a new speaker, but the noise was so 
deafening but few could catch the name. His 
appearance would indicate a professor of some 
school of learning. He seemed somewhat under- 
sized, complexion of a florid hue; had grey or blue 
eyes and a large shock of hair of auburn red. He 
cultivated a heavy drooping mustache; otherwise 
a smoothe shaven face with a serious expression. 
He wore a jaunty cap and a man's shawl hung in 
apparent negligence over his right shoulder. In 
his opening remarks his voice was very low — so 
indistinct, indeed, that their meaning could only 
be guessed at. But as his tones modulated in 
consonance with the gentle winds, — now high 
now low — a soft cadence keeping in seeming unsion 
with leaf-laden boughs of the hickories overhead, 
had wonderful effect. With a boys observation I 
noted the change in my environs. I found myself 
hedged in by a living mass of silent beingi pres- 



;3 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

siii!^ lowarcl ihc. speaker's stantl. E\ery morlal of 
them s'teiiiecl eniranced. Every eye fixed on the 
sp(^:iker's stand and all apparently oblivious to 
ilie iivino- world about theni save the wavinor 
siiock of red hair and stranoe weird voice. People 
had left their carriai^es, — the home goers had 
tiirnc^d, ialtercd and tlien ioiiied the sur<jino- mass 
— likened imto a hivinL,^ swarm ot bees. It was a 
lariL^c! audience under an imknown S}3ell — a hyp- 
notized coiigrei^ation. P^iilly an hour or niore the 
speakers strangely musical tones went on. and as 
if imiiatinof the; very trees overiu-ad, his voice 
^radualb-/ lulled, and then cam(; silence. A hack 
suddenly dro\e up, the orator replaced his shawl 
and cap and eiUerino' the vehicle was as hurriedlv 
sped away as he had beeii brought. The spell 
was broken. The chairman, as one wakino- from 
a dream shouted: 

" i hree cheers and a tiger for Henry Winter 
Davis, the Henry Clay of Maryland." 

And in response came a mighty roar from the 
belated audience, that echoed and re-echoed among 
these old wind shaken hickories of Zion — the like 
of which never did occur nor doubt we, ever 
will occur there again, 

Henry Winter Davis, of Maryland! 

While yet a student in the university through 
his stiburb oratory he restrained the bad passions 
of the Pluo- U^lies and Dead Rabbits two of the 
most ungovernable bands of hard characters that 
ever controlled the destiny of the then toughest 



THE HICKORY GROVE AT ZION 4 

city in the United States — Baltimore. 

Henry Winter Davis, of Maryland, who more 
than any one man called off the mobs of Baltimore 
that were attacking the troops under President 
Lmcoln's first call in their passag^e through that 
beligerent city. 

Henry Winter Davis, of Maryland. Whose 
loyalty to the Union there was no question As 
a representative of Congress he stood forth almost 
alone its Demothenies— its Cicero— its Henry Clay, 
although as members about him sat Blaine, sat 
Conkling, sat Schuyler Colfax. And after the elo- 
quent Marylander's death in I865, when some 
enthusiastic admirer of the New York statesman 
said through a leading newspaper that the ''man- 
tel of Henry Winter Davis had fallen on the broad 
shoulders of Roscoe Conkling," or words to that 
effect, and among other sentences elicited from 
Blaine the now famous response: 

"Mud to marble— dunghill to diamond! Oh, 
ye gods save us a profination of his holy name." 

Words that made a schism in the Republican 
party; ruined Conkling and lost the presidency 
of the United States to the intellectual giant from 
Maine. 



ON THE PIiANK ROAD AT CHAN- 
CELIiORSYILLH. 

DESCRIPTION of a battle by an actual partici- 
pant — contrary to general belief— is often 
faulty and of limited scope. He may be accurate 
in the occurances about him, and under his eye, 
but on a great battle field covering several square 
miles in which from one to two hundred thousand 
men are engaged, with the smoke and dust; the 
deafening roar of artillery and rattle of musketery 
the groans of dying men and neighing of the disa- 
bled horse — his description must necessarily be 
imperfect. Nothing could better illistrate this 
than to note how widely different people view an 
ordinary street fight or saloon fracas as instranced 
by the eye witnesses in a police court, although 
they are sworn to tell the truth and "nothing but 
the truth." It may be said in controvertion that 
many of these court witnesses were partisans to the 
case in question. But is it not the same on the 
battlefield? For aside from the open enemy, bick- 
erings and jealousies between, company, regimen- 
tal, brigade, divisions or corps, enter into the col- 
oring ot a description of a battle scene by an in- 
terested eye witness. Passing strange, indeed, 
if it did not. 



ON PLANK ROAD AT CHANCELLORSVILLE. 6 

Of the many histories of the American civil war 
by actual participants, imperfections as above no- 
ted are frequent. Even the accounts of the gen- 
erals in command differ widely on scenes and 
actions in which there should be no divergence. 
How much more pardonable then, in the accounts 
given to the world by the war correspondent, the 
understrapper or plain soldier. The truth is the 
most realistic discriptions of great battles come 
from writers who witessed only through the 
"mind's eye," with the gathering of details that, 
like pure wines improve with age. Official re- 
ports and details of action placed in the hands of 
a Victor Hugo as was the scenes at Waterloo, or 
our own Washington Irving, Prescott or Lippard, 
carry us nearer to our ideas of the actual than the 
participant with a limited range. These reflec- 
tions do not apply to a skirmish or engage- 
ment of small compass, but to a Malvern Hill — a 
Bull Run — a Chancellorsville or a Gettysburg. 

On the 29th day of April, 1863, the writer found 
himself astride of his ninth horse since the winter 
of '61 and was moving with Pleasanton's cavalry 
command across the Rappahannock at Kelly's 
ford. Although putting down my name in one 
company in the original make up, I had done duty 
in another since leaving camp in Nicetovvn Lane, 
on the old Germantown road near Philadelphia, 
in August, 1 86 1. Had resented the perfidy of a 
recruiting officer; had refused to muster, and in im- 
itation of a knight errant went over into the 
black horse (C) company and followed the for- 



7 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

tunes of the brave Irish leader through the first 
lour campaigns of the Potomac army, and until his 
death on the wilderness road south of the Chan- 
cellorsville house. And even before, — though but 
a "kid" of seventeen years — I had veteranized* — if 
four month's term could be called such — under 
President Lincon's first call after Fort Sumpter 
had fallen and communication with the national 
capital cut oft by a Baltimore mob. This by way 
of preface. 

On Saturday morning our squadron (C and D) 
moved down the south side of the Rappahannock, 
passing the old brick tavern of Chancellorsville to 
our right and soon entered a timber lined road lead- 
ing to an opening. On the under boughs of a big 
tree sat a fine specimen of the Virginia horned 
owl — and I think if ever this bird of wisdom kept 
up his reputation, that old fellow did. The boys 
yelled "hoo-hoo, hoo hoo," but never a word back 
did he speak, although he might in truth have said: 
''Don't be too gay boys, you may need my face 
by and by." In reaching a hollow, a halt was made 
and skirmish line deployed. While waiting I had 
a chat with a company D boy who had just been 
returned from a Philadelphia hospital where he 
was for six months or more. He looked in 
robust health — said he felt splendid and had a 
good time. We almost envied him his good for- 
tune as he sat on his horse, togged out in a new 
uniform and clean white collar. Alas! how swift 

* In Co. G, 2u(\ Pa. Vol. 



ON PLANK ROAD AT CHANCELLORSVILLE. 8 

the changes come to some of us. The young fel- 
low's bright uniform drew attention from a Con- 
federate sharp shooter; a bullet cut a jugular 
vein and his body was taken to the rear and bur- 
ied among the pines. All of this happening with- 
in an hour's time. 

After changing our position several times, we 
filed down on the broad pike leading south and 
again passing the Chancellorsville tavern to the 
right. General Joe Hooker stood leaning against 
a post watching us as we passed by, surrounded 
by his aids and other officers. After advancing 
a half mile or more we halted to the left of the 
turnpike road and at the end of a clearing facing 
a large body of scrub pine timber. Here was 
found General Pleasonton with the greater part of 
his cavalry division, dismounted, but not unsad- 
dled. We afterward learned this move was to 
support General Sickels, who was on the road 
leading to Fredericksburg. We were also ordered 
to dismount, but not unsaddle, and for the next 
two or three hours lay around without much order 
holding our horses by the bridle reins, and munch- 
ing occasionally at our fast depleting seven days 
rations with which we had loaded our haversacks 
down at Falmouth, three days before. V/hile 
reclining on a bed of grass looking up at the blue 
sky, I noted a big bird — a bald or fish eagle sweep 
across the cleared space, and high up in air. The 
sun was rapidly sinking to the tops of the pine 
trees and the air calm and serene, I remember of 
wishing that I could have that high flyer's view 



9 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

and know just what was going on about us. It was 
well for our content that the eagle alone saw the 
culmination ol events that an hour would bring 
forth; the veil of the future hid the scenes of the 
coming day, for in this clearing in which we were 
then so quietly resting was even before the light 
of the morrow stewn with hundreds of ghastly 
and bloody corpses uniformed in both the blue and 
the grey. Here and there occasional cannonading 
had been going on in our front all afternoon, but all 
at once a continuous rattle of musketry and some 
cannon shooting was heard down through the pine 
forest to our right. Soon came skurring orderlies, 
and Pleasanton called for Major Keenan, who af- 
ter a few hurried words came toward us with that 
well known smile that seem to come most to him 
in critical times — or in other words it was a dan- 
ger signal for his men. This was illustrated at 
the time by young Early — the kid of the company 
saying aloud as the Major approached: ''There is 
something up boys, see old Baldy smile." "Baldy" 
was the Major's pet name by his old company. A 
second later Keenan's voice rang out: 

''Prepare to mount. Mount. To the right by 
fours. Trot march," and down into the pines we 
went, turning at the tirst left hand road. While 
first a trot then a gallop, with Keenan at the head 
head of "A" with the other companies of his com- 
mand following in alphabetical order. 

From the poet George Parsons Lathrop we now 
call on to more clearly illustrate the finish in this 
scenebysomeextracts from his*' Keenan's Charge:" 



ON PLANK ROAD ATCHANCELLORSVILLE. 10 

The sun had set; 

The leaves with dew were wet, — 
Down fell a bloody dusk 

Where Stonewall's corps, like a beast of prey, 
Tore through with angry tusk. 

The Eleventh corps breaking: — 

Broke and fled. 

Not one stayed, — but the dead! 
With curses, shrieks, and cries, 

Horses, and wagons, and men, 
Tumbled back through the shuddering glen, 

And above us the fading skies. 

The charge: — 

By the shrouded gleam of the Western skies 
Brave Keen an looked into Pleasanton's eyes 

For an instant, — clear, and cool and still; 
Then, with a smile, he said: ^T will." 

* Cavalry, chargel" Not a man of them shrank. 

Their sharp, iull cheer, from rank on rank, 
Rose joyously, with a willing breath, — 

Rose like a greeting hail to death. 

Then forward they sprang,and spurred, and clashed; 

Shouted the officers, crimson -sashed; 
Rode well the men, each brave as his fellow, 

In their faded coacs of the blue and yellow; 
And above in the air, with an instinct true. 

Like a bird of war their pennon flew. 

With clank of scabbard, and thunder of steeds, 
And blades that shine like sunlit reeds, 

And strong brown faces bravely pale 
For fear their proud attempt shall fail, 

Three hundred Pennsylvanians close 
On twice ten thousand gallant foes. 

Line after line the troopers came 

To the edge of the wood that was ringed with 
flame; 
Rode in, and sabred, and shot, — and fell; 

Nor one came back his wounds to tell. 
And full in the midst rose Keenan, tall, 

In the gloom like a martyr awaiting his fall. 



11 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

While the circle-stroke of his sabre, swung 

'Round his head, like a halo there, luminous hung. 

Line after line, ay, whole platoons. 

Struck dead in their saddles, of brave draooons. 
By the maddened horses were onward borne, 

And into the vortex flung, trampled and torn; 
As Keenan fought with his men, side by side, 

So they rode, till there were no more to ride. 
And over them, lying there shattered and mute. 

What deep echo rolls?— 'Tis the death-salute 
From the cannon in place; for, heroes, you braved 

Your fate not in vain; the armv was saved! 



Over them now, — year following year, — 

Over their graves the pine-cones fall, 
And the whippoorwill chants his spectre call; 

But they stir not again, they raise no cheer; 
They have ceased. But their glory shall never cease. 

Nor their light be quenched in the light of peace. 
The rush of their charge is resounding still 

That saved the army at Chancellorsville. 

We believe the opinion stands with all military 
experts who witnessed or participated in the 
events of Chancellorsville that the presence of 
mind in Pleasanton putting up Keenan and his men 
on the sacrifical alter saved Hooker's whole army 
of over one hundred thousand men from a more 
terrible disaster than befell McDowell at the first 
Bull Run. And what was Pleasanton's reward? 
Promotion! No. Sent out west to fight Marma- 
duke and Pap Price, which he did to the finish, 
and thirty years after the war was over, died in want 
in a Washington garret, refusing the proffer of a 
pitiful pension — as a direct insult from political 
generals, to one of the most high minded and 
patriotic officers of the American civil war. 




One of Keenan's Troopers. 



THE TWO STRANGERS. 

ONE evening about the 20th of June, 1868, a 
group of guests including the writer, sat in 
the office of the old hotel with its varying names 
of Ash, International and the Merchants, then 
hostel headquarters of Yankton, Dakota's terri- 
torial capital. Supper was over, and the loungers 
were taking their ease. About this time, a young 
man sprang nimbly in the doorway, and asked for 
the proprietor. He seemed about twenty-four or 
twenty-five years of age, of medium size, dark 
grey eyes, smooth shaven face and dark head of 
hair enclined to curl. His round full face had a 
clerical cast, and the cut of his clothes — if they 
had not such a seedy, threadbare look — would 
have solified this impression. On the landlord's 
appearance the stranger asked for supper, break- 
fast and lodging. With a swift glance the host 
asked his guest for his baggage, and on being in- 
formed that he was not incumbered, the landlord 
told him it was his rule in such cases to ask for 
his pay in advance. This, after much rumaging^ 
in his pockets, and some confusion in his manner, 
was placed in the landlord's hands, after which 
the stranger was shown in the dining room. With 
the new arrival's exit trom the office some dispar- 
aging remarks were indulged in by the lounger's 
at the expense of the personal appearance of the 



13 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

travel-stained stranger. One remarked that his 
shirt bosom had not seen soap suds for a mon^h. 
while another, espied the stranger's bell crowned 
beaver hanging upon the hat rack, said that ''such 
a tile should be made to uniform wnth the rest 
of his duds," and proceeded to smash in its 
crown with his fists/-' 

In the meantime the bossee of the hotel with 
instructions from the proprietor, went out and 
locked the stables securely, saying after having^ 
done so. 

"Yes sir-ee, w^e have a horse thief with us to 
night, and we'll have to watch things?" 

It is needless to add that the stranger w^as shad- 
owed until retiring to his room for the nights rest. 
Morning found everything safe about the hotel, 
and the young man under suspicion's ban politely 
announced that he was seeking employment, and 
would be glad to obtain it. The usual spring rush 
of young men from the east had filled up the va- 
cant places, and the only job in sight ofiered was 
a line of post holes to be dug at the edge of town 
and although in the full heat of summer days he 
cheerfully accepted the task, and with coat off and 
bared head he tugged and perspired at his work 
the long days through, and although doubtlessl . 



*This act was done by a burly brute naoied Du- 
gan, w^ho through a court technecaiity had just been 
released from custody for the cowardly murder of 
a twelve year old boy at or near Cheyenne, Wyo- 
ming-. A year later he reached ihe end of a vigi- 
lante's rope for the murder of an old man near 
Denver, Colorado 



low 



THE TWO STRANGERS. 14 

ell lagged when the sun hid itself behind the 
range of hills overlooking this little frontier 
cLiplial, he did not complain of it. The idlers on 
the \ cranda of the hotel who were vainly waiting 
Dame Fortune's deferred visit, with broad grins 
on their faces and ''cutting" remarks with their 
tongues, as they watched the weary toiler take 
ofi his heavy plug and sit it on the ground beside 
himself while at work. 

The writer of these lines was employed at this 
time on a printer's case in the old Dakotain office 
on Territorial book work, and after meals at the 
hotel it was cusiomary before going to my case in 
the office to take a few minutes stroll to the river 
front in recreadve exercise. I noted, also at this 
time that the stranger had the same habit and we 
sometimes met there. One morning after break- 
fast an incident of this kind occurred. The 
opening of the day was beautiful, — a heavy fog 
just raising above the sand bars in our front, 
while the big rising sun seemed in crimson blush, 
now and again obscured by the passing of the 
fot/ veil, 1 o our right under the chalky bluffs, 
Presho's woods — now but a memory — Its forest of 
dew bathed leaves glinted and danced in the rays 
of the sun beams. In the high willows facing the 
timber, fifteen or twenty lodges of the red San- 
tees were serenely poising, and now and again a 
wreath of blue smoke curling high in air, A few 
of the swarthy occupants w^ere sauntering upon 
the sands or tileing along the narrow foot trail to- 
ward's "Shad-owa towa" or ''Charley Pecotte's 



15 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

town" as the native red people thereabout persist- 
ed in caUing the ambitious capital city to the dis- 
traction of some of its good people. 

The stranger stood for some moments with a 
gloomy face as he peered out upon the river, and 
the living panorama spread before him. Whatever 
his thoughts were I could not conjure. Was he ga- 
zing beyond the rising mist, if so what did he see? 
Suddenly the lines of his smooth round face lost 
its care worn look, his grey eyes heretofore shaded 
or hid in their sockets by pertruding brows, now 
seemed beaming in playfull mood, and assuming 
an elocutionary attitude and waving his hand in 
the direction of the tepees in the willows, with 
real eloquent pathos declaimed Pope's beautiful 
lines beg^inning with: — 

"Lo the poor Indian whose mitutored mind 
Sees God in the clouds, and hears him in the wind. 
His soul proud science never taught to stray 
Far as the solar walk or milky way; 
Yet simple nature to his hopes has given, 
Behind the cloud-topped hill, a humbler heaven; 
Some safer world in depth of moods embraced. 
Some happier island in the watery waste. 
Where slaves once more their native land behold, 
No fiends tormants, no Christian thirst for gold." 

After a lew compliments on his declamatory 
style, we dropped into a discourse, ana in conclu- 
ding said that he supposed, in his present plight, 
it would be hard work to convince the people of 
Yankton that he was the brother of a doctor; the 
son of a doctor; a graduate of Ann Arbor L^ni- 



THE TWO STRANGERS. 16 

son of a doctor; a graduate of Ann Arbor Uni- 
versity a practitioner physican himself with a grad- 
uating course finished and a diplomo to show for 
it. In reply I freely admitted such a declaration 
would be in the nature of a surprise to the people 
there; that there was room for another physician 
in the Territory; that I would issue the inidal 
number of the Dakota Democrat in a few days, 
and as an earnest of my faith in his ascending 
star would publish his card in the first issue with- 
out any charge to himself — and so a surprise was 
sprung on that line, in the first issue of the Dsmo- 
CRAT, July 8th, 1868. 

About two weeks or more after the paper had 
appeared, this doctor or ''quack" as the loungers 
persisted in calling him — invited me to his room 
at our hotel. He was in good spirits and said 
things were going right with him. On his table 
a brimming bucket of beer had been placed, fresh 
on tap from Russtacher's frontier brewery. We 
were not alone. Sitting on a chair and reclining 
against the wall was the face of a stranger. He 
arose and was introduced as "Mr. Stevenson, of 
Iowa, tragedian and dramatic reader." The man 
was young, tall, rather sandy complexioned, with a 
gruff hearty, self-assuring manner. Had just took 
a run up there from Sioux City, he said, to sec a 
link in his destiny. The link though a lately 
welded one he added, was none the less well 
forged, and of good material. 

After some pleasant repartee, in which I joined, 
they mutually told the story of their first meeting 



17 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

at Missouri Valley Juncton, some weeks before. 
They were both financially stranded, contided their 
troubles to each other, and mutually agreed to 
* 'raise the wind." They footed it over to Magnolia, 
twenty miles or more, rented a hall on promises, 
''Stood off' the printer and billed the town for 
Shakesperian readings and comicalities. After 
two or three nights,— printers bill paid, they came 
up the grade and landed with three dollars and 
seventy-five cents wrapped up in the company 
exchequer. A division of sentiment as to business 
prospects in that town demanded a division of com- 
pany property, and stranger Number One crossed 
Big Sioux bridge with one dollar and thirty-five 
cents to meet his star of destiny in the land of 
the Dakotas. It was in this manner they had 
told their story. After the departure of the 
next Iowa bound stage, the face of stranger Num- 
ber Two, was missing at the International. 

Many years later — being in a reminiscent mood 
while resting at a ranch — I told this story. Com- 
rade Mercer, who had been listening, thought he 
could help me a little further along with stranger 
Number Two, and begged pardon for the inter- 
ruption. Here is what he said: 

''I was down working in a brick yard in Sioux 
City, Iowa, in the autumn of 1868. One night 
in early September, I saw a large crowd gathering 
in front of the balcony of the leading hotel. Up- 
on enquiry, I was told it was an open air political 
meeting, — so elbowed m\ way along the street^ 



THE TWO STRANGERS. 18 

following up the crowd. I could hear the speaker 
making his sallies, and see the clouds of hats go 
up, and hear the thunders ot applause that greet- 
ed his eloquent passages of approving words. 
*' Who is that speaker, " I asked of an old cit- 
izen as I passed along, "making all that uproar 
up yonder? " 

"Oh, that is Orator Stevenson," said old 
citizen. 

"Who is Orator Stevenson?" I asked, for 
I was an eastern tenderfoot then. 

"Oh. I don't know," replied old citizen, 
tersely, "the Republican State Central Committee 
have engaged him to even up the State ticket 
majorities with Grant and Colfax, and I guess he 
can do it — if any talker can." ' 

And he did. Results lined up with the orator's 
efforts on the stump and the hall rostrum. 

About the horse thief suspect of the Inter- 
naiional — Yankton's quack saw bones — or Stran- 
ger Number One — the reader might kindly en- 
quire — what had became of him» We can an- 
swer, referring to the old adage about sometime 
deception on first appearance, that it will hold good 
in this case. Stranger Number One had a large 
compass to go on, but in our concluding here, his 
later movements will be curtly told. Somtime 
after the events I have related in these opening 
pages, he courted and married a daughter of the 
leading Dakotain — called in those early days the 
Father of the Territory. He, also like Stranger 



19 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

Number Two, became a party leader and an able, 
eloquent public speaker. And medical quack, — 
well — for over twenty years thereafter — or un- 
til his death — ^he stood Territorial Dakota's 
formost physician. 





Long Soldier, 

Uncpapa Chief, whose band har- 

rassed the Garrison at old 

Fort Rice in the 

Sixties. 



ON DIYERGINC IiINBS. 

ON the south bank of the Missouri, nine miles 
north of where the Cannonball river joins 
that great Continental artery, terminate the range 
of isolated and uneven highlands now generally- 
termed the Little Heart ridge. If the Gros Ven- 
tre Indians can bring forth plain truth from their 
legend of the summit of these upheaved crags, it 
was here one fifth of the remnant of that tribe 
rested and were saved from the destruction that 
overwhelmed so many of their people several 
hundred years ago, when the floodgates from the 
ice bound Arctic seas were unloosened and a de- 
luge of waters poured down the Saskatchewan 
depression, and submerged all but the extreme 
high points of land, only decreasing in depth 
as the waters spread out on the wide southern 
plains on its destructive path to join the tepid 
stream in the Mexican gulf. 

About one mile south of this ridge can be seen 
a few isolated blufifs for the most part bare of veg- 
etation, and on their topmost peaks, round open- 
ings, that at the distance of the bluff's base, to an 
ordinary eye, seem poriholes from a frowning 
fortress. In these cones, as early as the openin:^ 
days of this century, the first intrepid explorers 
of the now dominent race, saw flying hither and 
thither from these apertures the proudest birds in 
all this land — the war eagle of the wild Indians. 



21 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

Across the Missouri, and northeast of these 
described lands, but some miles away was a body 
of water known to the native Sioux as "Mde Hans- 
ka" or the Long Lake. Apart from its shape — 
long and narrow — the lake had no significance, 
except that its boggy shores sheltered broods of 
wild fowl, and its location a convenient camping 
place for hunters of the antelope. 

In the order of marking time— being then the 
month of July, 1864^ — part of the Sully expedi- - 
tion, a command of several thousand soldiers sertt ' 
out by the government to punish and subdue cer- ' 
tain hostile bands of the Sioux in the nortwest, 
had reached this vicinity, just described, when 
a detatchment of the 50th regiment of Wisconsin 
volunteers, acting under orders from the Wash- 
ington war office, and who were encamped near 
the creek at the base of the cone hills, commenced 
to slash down the timber of neighboring groves, 
and tear up the virgin sod and manufacture 
adobe or sun dried brick, — so familiar in the con- 
struction of dwellings of the natives of New and 
old Mexico. 

The building of a "soldier tepee" at that point 
was not relished by the wary Sioux. They could 
not understand the motive of the white soldiers 
in wanting to build a "big v/ar house" among the 
cone hills that had long been sacred precincts of 
incubation of this bird of war; whose tail feath- 
ers transferred to their own heads were badges 
of a warrior's rank — marked in degree — one tail 
feather for each "coo" that would count for an 



ON DIVERGING LINES. 22 

enemy slain. Thus in pride, not even in name 
would they associate these invading white soldiers 
with the home of the war eagle, or the miniature 
Mount Arrat of the Gros v^entres, but as long as 
the banner floated in the breeze, or a log rested up- 
on the site of barrack or watch tower, that marked 
the historic ground of old Fort Rice, the Yankton 
Sioux and their alhed bands persisted in calling 
that military post, -'Mde Hanska Akecita Tepee" 
or as interpreted into plain English, — Long Lake 
Soldier house. 

Across the river from Fort Rice in these days 
of the military occupation, and a few miles down 
stream was a piece of low land known as the 
'lower hay bottom." It was here — except in 
very -dry seasons — that the hay contractor could 
finish up his provender contract with the post 
quartermaster, but in these exceptional cases a 
further haul was made upon the matted hay lands 
of the Horsehead, a few miles further down 
stream. But it was the ''lower hay bottom" that 
interested the writer and some traveling compan- 
ions in the autumn of 1869, when a comrade who 
had done duty in the regimental band at the fort 
had told his story of an incident of the haying 
season, and pointed out a clump of oak as the 
spot made noted by a fortold death. Our musi- 
cal comrade of the journey had joined us at Fort 
Sully, being on his return from a furlough cast. 
Upon after inquiry among the soldiers of the gar- 
rison his story was confirmed, and one of these 



23 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

soldiers and after scout — Gros Ventre Thompson 
— recounted this dream mystery, frequently, up 
to the day of his death — twenty eight years after. 
Here is the record as related at the time: 
In the haying season at the frontier miHtary 
posts, especially when there was danger from 
hostile Indian raids, it was customary for post 
commanders to furnish the hay contractors' 
w!th a soldier escort both for the hay camp proper 
as well as the moving train of hay haulers. The 
camp detail was usually made for the week, com- 
mencing Monday mornings. At the opening of 
the haying season of 1868 at Fort Rice, the usual 
demand was made on the post commandant lor 
escort for the lower haying camp, as small war 
parties of hostile Indians were known to be on the 
move. The detail was ordered and among the 
names of those, who. in the order of chance was 
placed upon the hrst sergeant s roll, was that of a 
young soldier named Vane. On hearing his name 
called for the detail, the soldier boy bursts into 
tears, and begged to be transferred to some other 
duty. When pressed for reasons — he related a 
strange dream of the previous night, in which he 
stood in the crotch of a low growing and scrags^y 
oak tree, looking over a plain of waving grass, 
wlu-n he saw that he was shot ^ik\ felt himself 
in the sensations of dying, and was thus in affriglu ^ 
when the bugle sounded the morning revelle. 

He was ridiculed by his companions, but he 
could not be comforted and even went to the post 
commander witf. his plea, but the result was he 



ON DIVERGING LINES. 24 

joined the escort and went down to the hay held. 
As he came near the camp he pointed to the tree 
clump of his dream. Calmness reigned in air 
on water and within the troubled breast. The 
low muffled sounds of the mowing machines at 
work, alone reached the ears of the soldier escort 
as they lay curled in the tent shade watching laz- 
ily the hay pitchers sweltering under an August 



sun. 

''Indians!' 



"Oh, Indians be damned," yawned a soldier, 
"not a hostile scare crow within a long hundred 
miles." 

The timjd antelope feed quietly in sight upon 
the neighboring^ bluffs. The ravan croaks and 
caws unconcernedly in airial flight, — hovering be- 
tween bluff and woodland. The little yellow 
flanked swifts, trot around windward of the camp 
fire, sniffing with unappeased hunger. 

"Indians!" 

"How scary those haymakers must be!" drawled 
a peevish escort, "to have us dragged down here 
to watch Indians for them. Bah!" 

Some soldiers arise and whist the straws from 
their woolen cloths and walk here and there to pass 
slow time away. Some go over and talk to the 
haymakers; some to the river and two or three 
wander to the blufl"s. The report of a gun now 
break the stillness. A bevy of chickens skurry 
through the air in affright. The ravans cease 
their cawing; the swifts had slunk away; the day 
orb casting its lengthing shadow across hill and 



25 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

valley,— the big crimson ball seemingly linger- 
ing behind the darkened rear base of the long 
high peaks where once the Gros Ventres hoped 
and prayed. The rays ivaft back a stream of 
purple across the profile on Horshead hills, and 
die verest glimpse of receeding shadows of 
some horsemen in single file are noted ere they 
vanish. 

The alarm is given and both soldiers and hay- 
makers centre at the camp. Vane alone is miss 
ing. A search is ordered and a report reached. 

"Did you find him?" asked the corporal com- 
manding, of an Irish soldier who had lingered in 
the search. 

"Yes sir!' 

"Where was he?" 

"In the oak clump." 

"Asleep?" 

"No, Dead. Bullet in his head. Scalp torn 
off. Stripped and mutilated." 

"Saw no Indians?" 

"None." 

II 

There are times in the matter of unimportant 
detail where memory refuses to "catch on" or 
help out, when a record of the event sought be- 
come misplaced. I wave positiveness in saying it 
was the steamer Big Horn, that brought General 
Hancock and party from Fort Stevenson to hort 
Rice, on the 4th of July 1869, though personally 
fortur^ate to be — at least temporarily--of the party. 
But as this chronicle is a record of events and of 



ON DIVERGING LINES. 2G 

characters of which the Hancock party had noth- 
ing to do, — I beg pardon of of my readers for 
this opening digression. But upon this occasion 
while that distinguested officer was entertaining 
the commandant at Fort Rice and fellow officers 
with a flow of claret and champagne from the re- 
cepdon cabin on the steamer, the chronicler of 
these pages had hied himself up the gangway, 
and after a few hundred yards stroll found himself 
on a cracker box seat at Durfee & Peck's trading 
house and sutler store for the garrison. 

Gala day had brought all the post characters 
there. Leaning against the counter with his legs 
crossed rested Frank Lafrombeau, the half breed 
Sioux mterpreter, who seemed dreaming of the 
awaiting ferryman about to take him across the 
dark river. Beside him and watching the display of 
red and black blankets and bright caicoes, was the 
interpreter's Sioux brother-in-law — One Hundred, 
at that dme the most noted Indian horse thief on 
the Upper Missouri, Some soldiers were joshing 
him and he was giving "back talk" in fair English. 
He had previously made a trip to St. Louis city; 
had picked up considerable roguery, and but lit- 
tle else, other than his language addidon that was 
any real benefit, — rather the reverse. 

Further along the counter, stood a tall black 
man examining some newly purchased articles in 

company with the partner of his bosom a smiling 

Sioux matron. He ratded away in Sioux now 

to his red painted wife — now to One Hundred 



27 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

now to some loung^ing Sioux scouts, — ^speaking to 
the white soldier or citizen, only when spoken to. 
Why should ke do otherwise? Let the magician 
now wave a prophet's wand over this black man's 
head, and call down time for a year on what is to 
be. What do we see? A covering of cold earth 
for Lafrombeau — a post interpretor's garlands for 
this Africo-Amerlcan. Again raise the wand of 
magic over this kinky head — call time's advance 
seven years, lacking nine days. What do we see? 
A vale containing hundreds of dead and mutilated 
soldiers. A vale containing thousands of excited 
Indians putting to torture a giant black. Ramrods 
are used to punch out his eyes; his feet and 
legs filled with shot and small balls. 

''Why this fiendishness?" asked the writhing 
b!ack. ''Why this hypocrisy?" answered back his 
red tormentors, **and why assist these white dogs 
in spying us out aud destroying your wife's peo- 
ple?" Thus had black Isaiah fallen — Fort Rice's 
second interpreter. 

But away with the magicians spell, Away with 
the events of what was to be. Let Isaiah talk 
on with One Hundred — let the soldiers joke and 
josh in the Durfce & Peck trading house. It Is all 
a part of the life drama that they are billed for. 
But another actor now appears at the doorway. 
A boyish face, and form tall and slim. Eyes, blue, 
and with a restless glance, scanning the faces to 
the right and left of him as he strides softly along. 

"How, Melbourne," spoke out some one from 
among the group of soldiers. 



ON DIVERGING LINES 28 

''How," tarily replied the young fellow spoken 
to, as he turned on his heels and walked out the 
doorway, and who was evidently searching for 
some one not within the store room. 

"Melbourne seems restless since he received his 
bobtail," spoke up another soldier, as he looked 
toward the door. 

''Make anybody restless under the circumstan- 
ces." added still another soldier, "and almost hate 
one's own race and kind." 

"Yes," chimed in a bystanding citizen, "it was a 
pretty tough case, as I understand it." 

At that moment the steamer's whistle at the 
landing warned all its passenq^ers that time had 
arrived to pull in the gang planks for a further 
journey down stream, and half an hour later Fort 
Rice and all its "pomp and circumstance of war," 
was — for the time being — receding from our view. 

Aiter a rapid down stream run of twenty hours 
the steamer tied up at Cheyenne agency long 
enough to get ourselves and luggage ashore and 
say good bye to casual acquaintences. A week 
or more of observation among the Minnecon- 
jous, Sans Arcs and Etasapa Sioux, I crossed the 
big river, and made camp with some lumbermen 
at Litde Bend. 1 here met some ex-soldiers who 
had seen service at Fort Rice. Enquiry was 
made about the mystery of the Melbourne case, 
and here were some of the facts elicited: 

Melbourne was certainly under the lawful age 
when he enlisted as a soldier, (hough his height 



29 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

carried him on the rolls. He had enlisted alone, 
and none amono his new found comrades seem to 
know from whence he came. It was soon discov- 
ered he was a boy of artistic tastes; showed con- 
siderable book knowledge for one so young- in 
years, and had a remarkable gift in imitative pen- 
manship. In his general make up. the boy had a 
docile, tractable disposition with modest demeanor 
and obliging ways. 

Many of the older enlisted soldiers at the fron- 
tier posts, in those days, were confirmed topers, 
and some of them, at least could date their en- 
listment from an effort to break away from envi- 
rons that held them in hopeless bondage. A 
small allowance of whiskey, within the scope of 
the army regulations, was habitually served from 
die sutler store of the garrison for such of these 
soldiers whose appetite for intoxicating drinks 
still had control of them. In certain emergencies 
the commander of the post was authorized by the 
war department to allow over his signature, the is- 
suance of a certain amount of whiskey or brandy 
to the party holding the order. In apparent jest 
some of the older heads asked Melbourne to 
write out a whiskey order and sign the post com- 
mandment's name to it. The work was done so 
well that it was repeated again, until the com- 
mander wondered where the laxity came in that 
made a drunken mob which filled the guard house 
with so many of his soldiers, His wonderment 
grew more intense when shown the leak in com- 
missary whiskey over his own signature, and com- 



ON DlVERGmG LINES 30 

mencecl to fear thai he had been "out of his head" 
at limes, as his signed name was so apparently 
genuine he could not doubt the authorship. 

The young soldier became fearful of exposure, 
and the consequences thereof, so when solicited 
by his comrades for a renewal of forged orders, 
he absolutely refused. In consequence of re- 
fusal these same soldiers reported to the post 
commander that the boy Melbourne was the 
author of the whiskey forgeries. As was to be 
expected the young fellow^ was thrown in'the post 
guard house, and while saved from the penitentiary 
by the influence of an officer' s wife — dishonorably 
discharged from the United States army. 

During the closing days of August of that year 
1869, the chronicler found himself employed as 
camp lookout or day guard for the two contractors, 
Dillon & McCartney's haying camp, having tem- 
porarily pitched our tent on the west side of the 
big river two miles north of the Grand River 
Agency. The shooting down of Cook a few days 
previous, without excuse or provocation, by a 
brother of the Uncpapa chief, Long soldier, and 
his open boast that this herder would not be the 
last he would send to the ''white man's happy 
hunting ground," with the lionizing he received in 
this big brother's camp, put us on our guard. My 
duty was to watch every movement indicating a 
grouping of Indians between their camps on Oak 
creek and the hay cutters at work. They had 
made many threats, and we were hourly in expec- 



'il KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

tancy of trouble. Some distance above our camp 
was that of the cattle contractor's herd, with the 
two Mulls— Faddcn and Herron in charge. The 
lands about here were full of historic interest to 
the Indian race, especially the persecuted Arica- 
rees. Three miles away on the south — forcing its 
way through a semi-sterile line of tortuous bluffs 
from the west comes in the swift flowing, modern 
Grand, but named with two centuries of practice — 
in courtesy by the all conquering Sioux, — Pah- 
donee Towa Wakpah — or as interpreted into 
the English tongue — Rees Own River. Beyond 
its banks of alternate sand and clay and midway 
with Oak creek's parallel lines, the uneven ground 
mounds and depressions mark the site of the old 
village where the Aricaree chiefs scorned the 
profcred whiskey tendered them by Lewis and 
Clark in 1804, with the sensible remark that "peo 
pie who tried to make fools of us by taking 
away our wits, could not be our friends." 

From my camp observatory— on the bench lands 
near by was another interesting site— and like the 
dreamer that I was, went down from my perch 
one pleasant afternoon to revel among rhe ruins. 
It was here thirty six years before, that this little 
Aricaree town consisti'ig of about one hundred 
and fitty lodges, poorly palisaded— yielded up as 
a sacrifice on the alter of helpless prejudice the 
warm blood of many of its n:othcrs and iis 
daughters— of sons and fathers. From my stony 
guard perch on yonder hill, had belched fordi 
from big morter guns shot and shell on this hap- 



ON DIVERGING LINES 32 

less town. General Atkinson of the United 
States army, in command of an expedition con- 
sisting of a thousand soldiers — having a section 
of artillery with a regiment of dragoons, had 
marched, from the borders of eastern Iowa, com- 
ing over one thousand miles to punish these Arica- 
rees. With the soldiers, came also — as vultures 
to an intending feast — a great camp of Sioux 
warriors to "rub out" their hated foe. You can 
wonder as I had done, how any of these Aricarees 
got away. But they did— though a large portion 
of them were left to (eeA the coyote, the magpie 
and the buzzard. I could see this village as Catlin 
the painter had portrayed it on canvas two years 
before its destruction. I could see its frail pickets 
behind which the happy villagers reveled in all the 
pleasures, Indian life gives. In fancy, I could see 
these inmates scan from their house tops, objects 
whose sameness never seem to tire the eye. From 
youth to old age, the stone guard of the pinnacle 
is more familiar to the village inmate, than was 
a member the family, inasmuch as time's eternal 
transit would leave no impress. I pass on to the 
last struggle and see hopelessness and dispair on 
the one side, — an anticipated carnival of blood 
on the other. — 

**Hello there!" 

My dream or conjuration vanished at the sound. 
Before me stood a tall, pale faced young fellow, 
of 17 or 18 years, with his blue orbs gazing stead- 
ily in my face. I made a venture at recognition 



S3 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

"Your name is Melbourne, I believe." 

"That's what it is." 

"Sit down then. I want to talk. 1 have some 
questions to ask of ) ou?" 

He sat down quietly on a mound with an in- 
tense look of anxious inquiry pictured on his 
boyish looking face. He gave a look of surprise 
when questioned about his boyhood but his replies 
were so studiously evasive that I changed tack to 
Fort Rice, and of the troubles that led to his dis- 
missel from the army. He made but little more 
admission than what has already been told. It 
was plain to be seen the subject was distaseful. 

"HeI!o, "said he suddenly looking up towards 
the hills, "there goes a crowd of Indians to the 
cow camp, and I must go — won't you come along?" 

"Yes, I'll go long" I replied, "and see your 
outfit." 

•'I am going to ask some old Sioux patriarch 
all about that Rce village," said he, tossing back 
his arm as we jogged along. 

After reaching the herd camp, we found about 
one dozen Indians of both sexes standing around. 
Notwithstanding my limited amount of Sioux, I 
undertook to draw some information about the old 
Arlcaree village from a veteran Uncpapa, but the 
grey haired warrior referred to his chief the noted 
orator Running Antelope, as one of the few still 
living who participated in the destruction of that 
village. 

My dialectic twists aud imperfect rendition of 
the Sioux caught Melbourn's attention, and com- 



ON DIVERGING LINES 

"in^ up to where I was standing, said, ^Oh! jude, 
let me talk," and surprijfed me with an exhibition 
of a masterful rendition of the Sioux tongue; 
going ftom one to another, male and female, con- 
versing with perfect control of the guttcral stum- 
bling blocks, to amateur linguists in the language 
of the Sioux. In surprise, I said: 

"Where did you pick up such perfect Sioux." 

"Where do I pick anything up," he replied 
"tell mr and I'll tell you." Then after a moment 
of silence he resumed: "I suppose you think all 
I need is sl blanket to make a good Indian — or 
a bad one!" 

After bidding him good day and starting back 
to camp, he called out: 

"You see this hooded Indian here. He's the 
fellow that plugged the arrows into Cook." 

I had an occasion to reme mber Cook. With a 
rough wagon and a span of mules, I took him 
from the agency physician's care at Grand River, 
and in two days landed him in the surgeon's care 
at F'ort Sully — distance without trail — 120 miles. 
This, to prolong Cook's life. 



In the autumn of 1883. a party of Minnccon- 
jous who had been absent from their ag^ency for 
over two years returned and encamped near the 
mouth of Big Cheyenne river. They were what 
vvas termed at the agency, "hostiles" and were 
known to have been with Pawnee Killer and his 
band of Brules on the Platte river. Through 
some of the agency Indians it was learned that 



35 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

they had been concerned in the massacre of the 
Buck surveying party in which Contractor Buck 
and his party, consisting of twelve men. in all, lost 
their lives by the hands of these hostilcs. They 
claim 2 i that the bbody work had been care- 
fully planned and its execution intrusted to a 
young white man who had been with the party 
for some time, and known as the White Soldier. 
These murders took place in western Nebraska, 
near the country known as the Sand Hills. No 
details could be elicited further than whatever 
blame was attached or credit given — as viewed on 
diverse lines, — must be given to this white man. 
The Indians described him as but a tall boy, a good 
linguist in the Sioux tongue, dressy and vain He 
painted in true Indian style, with pendants, hair 
ornaments and beaded blankets. After the mas- 
sacre of the surveyors, he decked his head with 
many war eagle feathers as his right, thus an envy 
was created— and soon after through some fancied 
grievance from a jealous red, he was tomahawked 
to death, and with true savagery his body mutila- 
ted and left uncovered to rot upon the prairie. 

The identity ot the renegade soldier was not long 
a mystery. Among this band of Minncconjous, 
was a young fellow who had picked up some En- 
glish around the old agency at Grand river. He 
was asked about the white renegade and If. he 
knew him. He answered that he knew him well, 
as did his questioners. "Minneconjous call Kim 
White Soldier" said he, ''but white soldiers called 
him Melbourne." 



ON DIVERGING LINES. 36 

III 
I WAS sitting in the doorstep of the Httle fort- 
fied homestead claim at the Woods, wonder- 
ing as many another had done before -and atter 
that date— August. 1873 — when, land values 
would lake a jump and either let us out of the 
farm, or bring some encouragement to remain 
in posssession. The timber point in which 1 was 
domiciled, had been the first squatter land claim 
staked off along the Missouri north of the North- 
ern Pacific railroad, and although the time had been 
but Ititle over a \ ear since the advent of the loco- 
motive, the strain of expectancy had a disturbing 
effect on the nerves, notwithstanding the spice of 
existence was somtimes enlivened by the self in- 
troduction of some "characier." Character study 
always inieresting, sometimes assumes even 
a poetic olint, when the conditions of the mind 
harmonize with the poetry in nature. At no 
period in ihe revclxing of the seasons does the 
poeiic or the visionary take possession of the 
ihe soul within us, as on line August days. Espe- 
cial! v i:: this true to the denizens v\ho live along 
the changing banks of the Upper Missouri river, 
which mighty stream save v>hen bound by icy fet- 
ters, is ever presenting itself to the human eye, 
ihrough the revolving lens of the kaleidoscope. 
Yet with all its shiking moods of anger or serenity 
ihcre is no charm so entransing to the poetical 
dreamer, in solitart. of the revery, as along the 
changing and falling banks and withiii hearing of 



37 KALEIDUSCOJMC LIVES. 

the miililtid noises of ihe swirling waters of ihls 
strange old river, on tranquil autumn n:ornings. 

Thus within hearin^r of the low ruari- g waters 
girdled with a heavy forest of great cottonwoods, 
that hide you in continuous shade, — what wonder 
that the mind becomes mellowed in revery. 
Characters — no*: mithical ones — but of the plain 
flesh and blood kind, pass in review. Here at 
the gate of this stockade had appeared a war party 
whose only trophy of their prowess to show, had 
had been the crimson blotched scalp of a sixteen 
year old, Sioux girl. Characters had been here 
who had talked wisdom from an owl. Characters 
had been here who had seen phantom bc-als 
manned by phantom crews move noiselessly 
down stream. Less than a year before a young 
man of fine physical carriage had passed up the 
trail with no weapon but a hatchet, afoot and alone 
''looking for a team just a little ways ahead." Six 
months later he had reappeared. Frozen hands; 
frozen feet — frozen face. Clothed in tatters and 
bareheaded. 

"Where have you been?" had asked a transient 
companion of mine, on the man's reappearance. 

"Living with the deer." 

That was all he had for answer — living with the 
deer. Show me Burleigh City's graveyard and I 
will show you this man's grave. No questions as 
to his name? No questions about where he was 
from? No inquiry about the young wife who had 
gone estray? For we will answer no questions 
here. But trom his first arrival on the Slope, this 



ON DIVERGING LINES. 38 

cloudy wanderer's one central thought was in 
looking for that team — "just a Htt!e ways ahead." 

Out from this revery. Out from gazing on 
these shifting characters in transit across the 
Woods. They march along the boards like the 
stage actors in the Cassandria play. Reynolds — 
McCall the Miner— Bloody Knife — Guppy— Chiss 
Chippereen — Johnny of the Rose Buds — Dia- 
mond the VVolfer — Long Hair Mary. They all 
move across — noiseless phantoms drawn out in 
review to the unseen eye by the brain's conjuration. 
While thus in silent rumination sounds of a walk- 
ing horse was heard, and a moment later there 
appeared at the timber opening a tall man lead- 
ing a scrub pony, coming toward the stockade, 
The man ambled forward in an ungainly way. A 
long tom ritie of the old style — days of our grand- 
father epoch— angled across his shoulder. A 
coon skin cap was pressed down over his massive 
l:ead of matted hair. A long grease soiled 
buckskin shirt, with tangled fringes, hung loosely 
over his unshapely form. And over it all hung 
a huge old fashioned cow powder horn. A poor 
old pony— having the appearance of being an 
Indian's 'turned out, "with a fairly decent saddle, 
and across the seat were thrown a roll of blankets, 
while tied to the pummel was a gunny sack with 
a mess of flour, and two or three blackened peach 
cans that evidently did duty in the culinary. 

I had seen such habiliments in which this stran- 
ger was attired, pictured in the old early Ohio 
books that told us all about Simon Girty, Lewis 



39 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

Whetzel or old Daniel Boone. Could my eyes 
deceive me, or was this another Rip Van Win- 
kle case; a ninety years sleep? At any rate my 
fad was gratified. 1 had a new character to solve. 

'•You arc a hunter, I guess," I had ventured 
to say. 

'That what I am" he retorted, 

''Where have yiu been hunting? ' 

"Of late— down around Fort Rice.' 

"Get any game down that way?" 

"I reckon I did. Elk, antelope, deer, bear and 
moose.' 

"Moose?" 

"That's what I said. Moose!" 

"There is no moose on this river." 

"1 reckon there is moose on this river. I killed 
a young bull moose on the bottom this side of 
Fort Rice. I reckon I know what I'm talking 
about. I'm a moose hunter from Maine! 

"A moose hunter from Maine?" 

"That's what I am. A moose hunter from 
Maine." 

"Well, unsaddle and bring your donnage in?" 

That's what I'll do, for I'm going to stay a 
whole month with you." 

"Baited with curiosity and springing my own 
trap,' said I softly. 

On the following morning my unkempt guest 
said his desire was to use the stockade as a kind 
of headquarters. He wou!d hunt a little; visit a 
little; with an occasional trip to the town by the 
railroad. This he did, but in his hunts he never 



0:s DiVEiiGixVG LiXES. lO 

brought back any game; In his visits to distant 
woodyards he brought back no greeting and 
in his weekly visits to the town he brought no in- 
formation from the outside world. 

One day we concluded to visit the Burnt woods 
on the west side where Williams & Wheeler were 
getting out cordwood for the steamboats, Chris 
Weaver here told the story of his premonition at 
the Spanish Woodyard whereby the warning had 
saved his life. The moose hunter was greatly 
interested in its recital. On our road home in 
passing through the long bottom above the little 
fort we espied a traveling war party, and I sug- 
gested we keep out of sight until they passed. 
He complied with alacrity. But some of the red 
warriors had already seen us, and in our fancied 
security were treated to a surprise. They had 
us surrounded. They were Gros Ventres, how- 
ever, and took in the moose hunter at a glance. 
After surveying his muzzle loading long tom, one 
warrior extending his open palm said in English: 

"Caps!" 

In a second the moose hunter handed him a 
full box of percussions, and the Gros Ventre 
clasped them and made off. 

"Wny, what a dough-god to give that Indian all 
your gun caps" I said chidingly. 

"Oh, I've got another box," he replied, "and if 
I did'nt have, it would't be much loss," he added 
philosophically. 

A few days later, the hunter said he would 
''take a ramble up to Forts Stevenson and Ber 



41 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

thold," which he did, but failed to return. A Fort 
Buford mail carrier had noted him as a "queer old 
bloke who had stopped at every Indian camp and 
wood yard that he came to." 

The year following the steamer Nellie Peck 
tied up for the night at Mercer & Gray's yard at 
Painted Woods landing. Dr. Terry a St. Louis 
ex-physician was acting as clerk and purchasing 
furs for the Durfee & Peck company. Sitdngin 
the boats cabin were a party relating incidents of 
happenings along the river. Among others the 
writer told of his experience with the moose 
hunter from Maine. At conclusion of the reci- 
tal, Dr. Terry, volunteered the following ad- 
denda: 

^'I happen to know something about your 
moose hunter. You had seen him in a clever 
make-up. He is a good trailer. But he is bet- 
ter at hunting: men than moose. He has a coun 
try-wide reputation as one of the shrewdest 
sleuths on the Pinkerton detective force." 

At the close of the month of /\pril, i^^.b). two 
men »at astride log stools looking into the blazing- 
fire in a little makeshift cabin at the lower bend 
of what was known in those days as "Out a luck 
Point." being the second timber bend on the west 
side of the river Missouri above Fi rt Stevenson. 
Both were looking into the blaze in silent cogita- 
tion, but whither dreaming over the past or into 
the future the chronicler could not divine. With 



ON DIVEEGING LINES. 42 

each of these men past dreams were far from 
pleasant lingerings, and it was well for their peace 
of mind that their dreams ot the future were in 
wide divergence from the actual. But as before 
stated their dreams were known only to them 
selves, but the coming of what was to be, as far 
as their earthly tenure was concerned, became a 
part of the records of their surviving contempor- 
aries. Had the veil hiding actuality of the future 
been raised beyond the burning brands in which 
each of them were silently gazing, each could 
have beheld a thorny path in their few remaining 
years. One could have seen himself shot to 
death, his body placed in a shallow grave with a 
l.lanket both for shroud and coffin. The site that 
marked his grave now mark the path of swift 
iiowing. channel waters. His companion had lin- 
gered in life a few years later A gloomy forest 
shrouded him — alone and unseen by mortal man 
he died a maniac's death. Buzzards feasted upon 
his decayed fiesh; badgers sported with his scat- 
tered bones. 

"I seed the shadow of that Injun to night agin, 
and don't like it, ' said one of the men without 
withdrawing his gaze from the burning coals. He 
was the larger and older of the two. 

'Kind'a queer,"' answered his companion, ^'if 
he belonged up in the village and not come around 
here. Been poking about the bluffs for five or 
six days." 

''list a week to ni^ht since I first seed him!" 



43 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIYE8. 

"Did you cache the stock in a new place to 
nig^ht." 

"Yes." 

"Wc ought to rest easy then/' 

They did, but in going out to their stock caihe 
next morning their animals were missing. Two fine 
mules and two work ponies. The loss of stock 
forced the abandonment of the woodyard. 

The mules were the property of Trader Mal- 

nori, of Fort Berthold. In about four weeks 

from date of disapearance of the animals the 

trader received the following note through a scout 

dispatch bearer. The language was in French 

with the following English interpretation: 

Fort Rice, (no date.) 
Mr. C. Malnori: Opanwinge says he found your 
mules. * Send a man down with $200 and take them 
home. Yours with regards, F. LaFrombois^. 

The man and money was sent to Fort Rice and 

mules and man came home. 

'•I guess, I'll try wood-yarding a little nearer 
home/' said Trader Malnori when his mules were 
brought to his stables at Fort Berthold. He had 
some wood cut opposite to the fort. The same 
mules were sent across the river to do the wood 
hauling and the same man sent with them who had 
had charge of their keeping at Point Out-a-luck. 
A man known as Jimmy Deer and two red mat- 
rons crossed over the river in a bull boat to pile 
the cord wood brought to bank. The trail of the 
hauler led through a line of willows for half a 
mile or more. For two or three days all went 



ON DiVEKCilNG LINE^. 44 

well. But it was a dangerous neiohborhood. The 
driver from Out-a luck had provided himself with 
a Colt's army and a double barreled shot gun 
heavily charged with buck shot. One fine morn- 
ing the driver hitched up his mules as usual and 
trotted the team over the rough bottom road gaily 
to the crib pite. His pistol and shot gun were 
bouncing up and down in the wagon box as he 
hummed an old French son^. At a point where 
the w^illows lined a sand ridge a naked Indian 
arose quickly, pointing a gun at the wagon box 
fired away. The driver, forgeting all about his 
buckshot gun and pistol, dropped his lines and 
springing from the w-agon on the opposite side to 
the Indian dashed into the willows. The red man 
hopped into the w^agon, gathered up the lines of 
the now excited mules drove out toward the bluffs 
as far as the wood trail led, unhitched and unhar- 
nessed the mules, gathered up the pistol and shot 
gun, jumped astride of one of the animals, and was 
off on fast time over the hills. Meantime the shot 
alarmed the corder and the two matrons who had 
made a rush far the boat and in the excitement of 
i»mbarkation sunk it and nearly drowned all hands. 
About one month later Trader Malnori received 
the following note through an Indian runner from 
Fort Rice, written as the former one, in PVench, 
with the following English interpretation: 

Fort Rice, (no date) 
Mr. C. Malnori. — Opanwioge has found your mules 
again. Send down a man with §200. Yours with 
regards, F, LaFeombotse. 

There is no record of Malnori's answer, but 
Opanwinge kept the mules. 



45 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

\' 

About the middle of July, 1871, while journey- 
ing down the Missouri with a single companion, in 
a precariously constructed bull boat, we hauled in 
at Fort Rice, and walked up to the trader's store 
for the purpose of making a few purchases Here 
and there we noted a few^ familiar faces of past 
visits to the post, but for the most part the loungers 
at the trading establishment were strangers. One 
young fellow with a dark skin was masquerading in 
boorish antics with some Indians. Inqury solicited 
the information that he was a Mexican lad who 
had enlisted as a scout. Another conspicuous 
character — from his manner of speech— was a red 
headed, freckled faced young man, who was fa- 
miliarly termed "Reddy" but was spoken of as 
Red Clark. Among a group of scouts gathered 
near the doorway wasa^mall, fine featured Indian 
boy dressed in blue uniform of which he seemed 
quite proud. This boy was a Sioux, and recently 
distinguished himself in saving the post herd from 
a well planned raid by a war party of his hostile 
countrymen. The raiders suddenly swarmed out 
of a coulee on the apparently unprotected herd, 
but the boy Bad Bird instead of fleeing for his lile 
as many another in his place would have done, 
counteracted the efforts of the hostile raiders frcMii 
stampeding the cattle until help came from the 
fort. The baffled warriors hred a few shots after 
the boy. but luckily none taking effect, he rode 
back to the post the hero of the hour. 

In the move of events from that date — some 



ON DIVERaiNG LINES, -i-; 

two years or niwre — Red Clark and Bad Bird be- 
came ituiinate friends, as people saw diem. They 
started out on a trip across the bi^ river one night 
opposite to Fort Rice with jovial parting s^ood by's 
to the ferryman. They entered the heavy brush 
beyond the ferryman's ken, together. Clark came 
back alone. The next day Bad Bird's corpse was 
found with a bullet mark through his head. Clark 
was tried and acqui'ited for this murder. He plead 
self defence; night had hid the crime and no one 
could prove to the contrary. Besides this the 
dead Indian boy was of cne race, the judge, jury, 
witnessfs and prisoner of another. 

Five years passed by and Clark stood leaning 
against the counter of a dive in Butte, Montana. 
A stranger entered the place, called for a drink of 
whiskey and threw a silver dollar on the counter to 
the barkeeper for payment. Clark looked up to 
the man who would not stand treat, and clapping 
his open palm across the silver piece, said jocosely: . 

"That's mine." 

"No," said the stranger, "That is not yours." 

"That's mine," reiterated Clark with an at- 
tempt at gravity, and the next second a bullet 
w^ent crashing though his skull. 

A closing word about the Mexican lad and our 
curtain falls on these events of Fort Rice's earlv 
history. Santa, later, developed a .penchant for 
wild Indian life and made the acquaintance of a 
Sioux hanger-on named Black Vox, and the tw^o 
connived plan for a trip to the hostile Sioux, then 
in camp on Powder river. Santa Anna deserted 



47 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

his command and quarters on a November even - 
ino- takinor his horse, orun and amunition with him. 
besides a well filled sack of provisions. Black 
Fox was also similarily equipped, lacking the pro- 
visions. Riding back on the highlands they made 
themselves conspicuous by facing about from 
the dome of a conical butte and surveying the 
beautiful tinted landscape. The trim post was as 
silent and inactive in its surroundings as a military 
fort could well be. The mellow rays from the 
setting sun shone in glittering splendor from the 
west end of the buildings. The long line of brown 
marked the course of ice conjested waters of the 
Missouri that the crisp air had wrought. Santa An- 
na had probably wondered why his known deser- 
tion had caused so little stir down by the garri- 
son. The soldier still paced his lonely beat in 
seemingly meditative mood; the sound of axes at 
the evening wood pile sounded loud and merrily. 
Loiterers continue walking to and fro in their 
usual L^ait, the tethered ponies nibbling at grass 
roots about the outshirts — or drooping lazily; even 
the shaggy wolf dogs were basking contentedly 
about the red faced scouts quarters oblivious to all 
the Hving world. Perhaps the thought came to 
the )oung Mexican how little he was to this globe 
and perhaps the same thought Hitted across the 
brain of his sombre hued companion. A black, 
moonless nioht screened the last act in Santa's 
life p'ay. No rehersal. No need of that. A 
deadly blow — a mangled body and all was over. 
Black Fox strode into Grand River Agency next 
mornino. ridinij the Mexican's steed and leadino^ 
his own. Proud man of war. Within twelve hours 
h(^ hcjA c:\\)*A\vcd a horse and won a feather. 




Long Dog, 

Sioux- Aricaree Bandit Chief 
who ranged along the upper 
Missouri during the Seventies. 



A FRONTIER Cl-IROniSLS. 
I 

IT takes all kind ot people to make a world," 
is a saying as old as the lanjj^uage with which 
it is spoken, in a lesser decree — lessened only 
in proportion as to its material numbers — every 
separate community of the human race is diver- 
sified by all manner and shade of character. 

In the order of creation by the light given us we 
behold a great variety of life— quadrupeds of 
the earth's surface — birds of the air, and fishe» 
in the sea Though all around and about us, and 
breathing the air with us — warmed by the same 
sun of light — subject alike to soccora winds or 
frozen blasts — yet otherwise each and all of these 
diversified kinds of animal life live, apparently, 
in a sphere of their own. Though the strong 
prey upon the weak — the vicious upon the gentle, 
yet in all the generations that come and go the 
status of animal and bird life remain much the 
same. It is only through the agency of man or 
some great convulsion of the earth's surface or 
ravages of some special epidemic, when the 
equilibrium changes. With man as master the 
propagation or destruction of many of these ani- 
mals, bird or fish kinds of creation are subject to 
hisvvishes and may survive or perish at his will. 
Entire species may at his pleasure or displeasure 
disappear in untimely death. But do they go for- 
ever'* Does death end all? Go ask tkc dark 



49 KAlfElDGSCOPIC LIVES 

skinned millions of humans ikat spread them- 
selves over rhe fertile plains of Hindoostanj 
along the populous vales of the cradle of civil- 
ized man, the rivers E.iphrate^, the Indus and the 
Ganges, or harken to the red Indian seers of the 
Americas, 

Or to delve deeper with the subject in its pro- 
fundity as such would deserve, ask the intellectual 
giants of our own race — formost among^ thinkers, 
or go seek the tombs of the sages of all nations 
in all ages, who by their works and by their 
acts will have told you that these birds of the air 
and the animals of the fields, woods and jungle, 
long since mouldering with the dust of other 
days, did not die — but that you, my reader friend, 
may be one of them — in the evolving changes in 
the transmigration of souls. 

Thus in this human family of ours, we frequently 
mark the action and even ^he facial countenance 
of some animal of the four footed order. Here 
and there among our kind, we see the industrious 
beaver with architectural skill, tiding adverse ele- 
ment which, though he could forsee he could not 
hinder. He can build but cannot distroy. He 
will endure suffering but will not revenge himself 
by inflicting suffering upon others. Alas; that 
we have so few human beavers among us. 

Then comes the human porcupine who never 
seeks to harm others until first assaulted. Then 
he strikes back with fury. He resolves himself 
into a catapult, and flings, at once, a sliower of 
sharpened arrows upon his adversaries. 



A FRONTiKK CHKOMCLE, 50 

Then we see the crafty, pointed eared fox, 
who thrives on his wits— head work, with coW 
calculating points well in hand before he makes 
his deadly sprinor upon his bewildered victim. He 
relies as much for hi.- success on the stupidity of 
his intended prey as upon the more subtle 
moves of his own cunning. 

Then conies the cat kinds — born ingrates. Sly, 
soft in. tread, gentle voiced with moonish face, 
pleasant and purring in the presence of those 
they would destroy. Though creeping on velvet 
paws, — silent as a falHng feather, the presence of 
the catman's sinister designs is often betrayed to 
those he Vv^ould wrong by a softer, subtler, sub- 
conscious presence we call a presentiment,— a 
<Teeping something we can feel and yet cannot 
see. 

Then the mycetes — howling monkey can fre- 
quently be met with, having more energy in voice 
than in action. Then the sloth rotting in his lazi- 
ness, waitins: for choice vegirables to ripen— starv- 
ing or sleeping life away in the mearatime. Then 
we see the kahau in its reddish brown, basking m 
the tree shade— pestered by insects until its paws 
become by lapses of brain action almost perpetual 
in motion as though the swinging of arms and 
motions of its hands were the only relief from 
torment. Theri the gazelle, soft-eyed, unsuspi 
cions, innocent; then the antelope, by times 
watchful and wary — by times a victim of its own 
curiosity or short sightedness. 



51 KALSIDOSCOPIO LIVES 

The animals abov-e named are but a small groap 
of ^e four footed beasts typified in hunmn souls. 
If not transanimation is it absorption of souls? 
l( absorf)tion is it entailed? And if entailed, is 
the subtle working of the human mind made 
clearer? Transmigration of soul is defined as the 
passage of soul on death of one body into another 
body born at this same instant without referance 
to species, kind or kindred. Then wherefrom 
this manifold duplixity of character in one human 
breast. The human beaver of to-day transformed 
into the human wolf or lynx of to-morrow. Where- 
from, or whv so, the promptings of these kaleidos- 
copic lives whose duplicity of moves mystify even 
their own minds by inconsistency of action ? 

II 

In the writer's wanderings as a book seller over 
sections of territory separated by a great expanse 
the opportunity came for learning much of human 
nature, the diversity of minds and the separate 
aims of individual life. It is very doubtful if any 
other vocation in life will give one a clearer idea 
of human nature as we find it than that of a book 
agent. He will see people of separted vocations 
following a line of similar tastes other than their 
special line of business. The agent in canvassing 
a strange neighborhood, will be chary of a grocer, 
a blacksmith or a saloon man or the frequenter of 
saloons. While there is occasional exceptions in 
the two first named classes, the two latter classes 
invariably inform the literary vender that they 
"iTave i>o iig« for ho(^'s." Indeed a hotel and sa- 



A f::().\tikji cukomlle. 52 

loon keeper of thirl)' years -sLanclin(^r once candidlv 
informed the wrii^M" il was a j3art of their business 
to<lipconra_-e die \e,ui<-r of books at all times and 
under all circunisiarjces. 

On die odier hand a book agent seldom calls 
up n a telegraph tower along lines of railroad be- 
tween towns, or the modest country grist mill hid 
along some winding stream but that he usually 
meets with couaesy, if approached properly, and 
if his stock (-f books at all in line with the miller's 
or electrical man's thoughts, starts the book- 
ir.an off widi a more cheerful heart, heavier in 
piirs-e an.d lighter in pack. 

The country miller is usually the oricle of his 
neighborhood. Amidst the grinding of burrs and 
spashing of water over rcvolvmg wheels ke finds 
magic comfort in drowsily ruminating through the 
pages of a b(jok of information when not actually 
^jigaged in filling np his grain hoppers or direct- 
ing the machinism of his milL . 

Ill 
On a January evening, bhistry with driving 
snow, in the year 1894, ^ ^ew lounging guests 
were in a talking mood in the setting room of the 
Merchants hotel Washburn, McLean's county 
capital, North Dakota- Matters religious, phih^.- 
sopkical and speculative passed in review with the 
group, until the conversation narrowed down to 
events within county limits and to a historical des- 
ertation on its early settlement and organization. 

'*Do you remember G one of our firit 

county officers?" queried one o( the conversa- 



5;j KALEIDOSCOPIC Ll^TKS 

tionists, who was— at the time— conducrino- the 

Washhurn Hourino- mill. 

"Oh, yes responded another, "he's dead. Died 
several years ago." 

"Not so," said the hrst speaker, ''and I will tell 
you why I know." 

Thus with the miller's introductory narrative on 
that winter evening, and the writer's after trailing,! 
herewith present places and characters personnel 
of this chronicle of Dog Den range. 

IV 
It was in the year 1883, some mondis af'er its 
organization, that the county of McLean experi- 
enced what in popular parlance was termed a 
•'boom," viz: a large number of new settlers had 
arrived and made themselves homes upon the var- 
ious tracts of vacant lands that was spread out l^e. 
fore them, to be had bv occupation and a limited 
cultivation of the land. The little village of 
Washburn on the Missouri, previously spoken of 
was headquarters for both the land squatter and 
his more thrifty coadjutor the speculator. South 
of that town in the summer of the year above re- 
ferred to, a party of land hunters made camp in 
what was known as Mill coulee, a flouring mill 
being then in course of erection near iis abrupt 
banks on the bench land facing the Missouri. 

Of this party our chronicle has nothing to re- 
cord except in a persona) way, the discriptive out- 
line in the appearance of one individual. He was 
about fifty years of age, erect in carriage, blue 
eyes, and hair streaked with silver. He had a 



A F:{ONTlb:U CHHOMCLR, 54 

restless manner and in convereation exhibited 
scholarly mind with a ranoe of current informa- 
tion well in hand Afcer some conversation with 
the leaders of the conn y organization his suburb 
equipment in that line uuogested him a proper 
person for the office of register of deeds and as 
such his name appears on that county's records, 
a^ its first register. 

But in the selecaon of his homestead he had 
chosen a fertile tract around the shores of Lake 
Mandan. in another county, and as a consequence 

of the law's demand. Mc. G— choose to re- 

sio-n his office rather than surrender his land. 

In the year 1884, the great ridge or "Hills of 
ihe Prairie" (if we make literal translation from 
the French name applied in early maps of the 
couniry) was as yet a vast tract of vacant land, 
as far as human habitation was concerned. In the 
early summer days of that year, an adventurous 
siockman moved his herds in the neighborhood 
of a heavy timbered coulee, a few miles north of 
die Dog Den buttes— the highest point of land 
on the range. The ranch locauon was pictur- 
esque, ddie timbered front faced a great grassy 
plain to the eastward terminaung miles away in 
the tree ^reen timber line of Mouse river and the 
high jagg'^ed hills beyond. The towering buttes 
of the Dog Den that had- once upon a time- 
stood a water belted island, lashed by an angary 
sea. When this ranch among the hills was com- 
pleted, and the cured grasses stacked up for the 
snowy days, its Virginia proprietor placed a man 



55 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

in cliarge, while himself and residue of ihe p:\v:y 
hied themselves to their rendezvous on ihe Mis 
souri. The man in charge was the ex-regis:.er ol 
deeds from Washburn, and he was now elected 
to lead a hermit's life. His only neighbors on 
the range were a mysterious pair located imme- 
diately under the Dog Den butte. and had but 
recently located there. They had proved to 
be a pair of human falcons wlio watch their in- 
tended prey from perch, or in arid flight, and dart 
swiftly on their victim. F*or this had they builded 
a nest in a heavy ravine on the seamed sides o{ 
these historic hills, and flew to other lands only 
when the melting snows uncovered, — for others to 
view — a grusome skeleton. 

A rigorous winter of deep snow was the ex- 
reeister's inidation into a hermit ranchman's life 
In the intervals between careing for his Lovine 
herds and rustling up his fuel, he had but little to 
lighten the load that time was bearing upon him 
save fitful naps; trying to appease an unsatisfied 
appetite or dreaming away in lonesome reverie in 
front of the cheerful glare thrown out from the 
blaze on his hearthstone. 

VI 

Up to 1880 the Souris or Mouse river 'ox 
bow" so called had known no human habitations 
other than the skin *^tepee" of the native red men 
or the "shacks'* of their half cast, half wild broth- 
ers. But with rumors of westward extension of 
continental lines a few pioneers with teams, 
wagons and household effects appeared and se- 



A FKONTIh^liCHKONlULE. iO 

lectcd some choice locations between the Riviere 
des Lac and the bio bend of the Mouse at the 
mouth of the shallow watrrs of Wintering river. 
Between these two points in its primitive days 
were several groves of hardy oaks following the 
river's course, that, in summer days, looked sub- 
limely beautiful. The dark green compact groves 
of oak mingled with groups of the lighter green 
of the ash or lowly willow. Shutting their eyes 
and closing their memories to the rigors of its 
wintry days, the valley of the upper Mouse river, 
would seem a veritable paradise to the summer 
time homesteader. 

It was one of the summer days of 1883, that a 
canvass covered wagon with stout team of 
horses in front, came slowly trailing over the 
prairies from the eastward and halted near one 
of these oak groves of the Souris. The horses 
were unhitched and picketed near by, and the oc- 
cupants of the vehicle— three in number— mean- 
dered to the top of a nearby bluff to look about 
them. Far as their eyes could scan was a prim- 
ival solitude. True, a bird of prey now and then 
darted from some leafy coverlet; a red deer here 
and there went trailing in the open to disappear 
into another clump as quickly as it had come, 
but these incidents alone gave diversity to a still- 
ness as though it was a painted picture spread 
out on an artist's canvass. 

We hear no converse now. We gaze upon,- not 
listening to this trio on the hill. In one we see a 
venerable looking man in the youth of old age. 



57 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

He stood out erect with face aglow, with spark- 
ling eyes and arms in constant motion as though 
a battery indicator, His two companions were 
women — mother and daughter — if we judge by 
appearance, one a women of forty or more — the 
other a girl of fifteen They, too. had a happy 
look for it was decided among them to here build 
themselves a home. 

Day by day work went on with this trio of the 
wilderness, until house and stables were finished. 
Then they looked about them to find they had 
been followed by other settlers who also mad*- 
choice homes along the Mouse river valley. In 
the )ear that followed, habits of industry Irought 
forth good work. Fields of grain, pasturing cat. 
tie, rooting hogs, bleating lambs, quaking ducks. 
crowing roosters and cackling hens made this 
late wilderness solitude seem homelike. 

The venerable head of the tro just described 
was a minister of the Gospel, and rode out among 
his scattering neighbors preaching the good word 
when not busy cultivating his few acre.^ of rich 
and respondent soil. To ride thus among the 
newcomers of the valley, he deemed a duty or- 
dained. To radiate with the happy — to console 
the disconsolate — to lighten dark paths and to 
cheer and to guide the doubting, and lead them on 
a better way, w^ere life lines in this good mans 
work. The familiar figure encased in black, with 
long streaming silvery hair; a pleasant nod and 
cheery word for every parser by, linger yet in 



A FKONTIKK CHRONICLE. 58 

kind memory with many of the first settlers of 
the Mouse river valley. 

VII 

One August day in the year 1885, there came 
riding down upon the plain from the ridgee of 
the Dog Den range, a lone horseman. He was 
riding about in zigzag trails, seeking depressions 
of land or "draws, " as though serching forestrays 
from some herd. Such, indeed, his actions proved 
for the !i ^rseman was none other than the hermit 
ranchman from Winston's ranch on the prairie 
mountains. He had never visited the valley of 
the Mouse before, but now both curiosity and duty 
impelled him onward to the scattered and dis- 
tant settlements, where here and there mark of 
improvements bordering the groves of timber had 
caught his scanning eyes. As he rode near the 
dwellings, the green potato tops — the creeping 
vines of melon and squash — the tasseled corn 
wiih its justing ears of glossy silk were of more 
beaut) and interest to this man from the Dog Den 
than was any oiher sight that could have greeted 
his vision. He thought of his larder at the ranch 
on the range, that he had left as bare — almost — 
as the one visited by Mother Hubbard in song 
and story. The memory of ihe hard dry dough- 
gods, jack rabbit soup and black coffee that had 
kept his spark of existence aflame all the long 
winters and variable summers, brought a feeling 
of having lost some time space. 

Thus ruminating as he moved along, he espied 
ahead a neater and more homelike dwelling than 



59 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

any he had yet passed. In front of the house 
a much neater and thriftier patch ,of corn was 
noticed than any he had yet met with in the valley. 

A woman with a well shaded sun bonnet, stood 
industriously hoeing among the corn, oblivious to 
all surroundings. The man on horseback invol- 
untarily paused, saying to himself: 

"I've gone far enough. These roasting ears 
are tempting and I must have some. I shall beg 
or buy an armful from that woman." Thus with- 
out more adoo he rode up near where the woman 
was working and told of his desires. Something 
in the man's voice had startled her. She peered 
cautiously from her half closed bonnet at the un- 
kempt being before her. "Was it possible? No, 
it could not be." A crimson flush crossed her face, 
but the bonnet folds saved betrayal. At length the 
woman stammered aloud: 

''Are you not Mr. T ." 

"Possibly, possibly," replied the man with a 
startled look, "and you, and you are — " 

"Mrs. H the minister's wife" she snpli- 

mented, but you must get down and come to the 
house and see your child. Fourteen years is a 
very long, long time," she said in an absent wav. 

VI 

The reverand head of the household was absent 
from home at this time. He was ridinof out on 
his accustomed circuit preaching faith hope and 
charity to his little world of followers and be- 
lievers who were always ready to hear the faith- 
ful churchman expound the good word. 



A. FRONTlKk CHRONICLE, 60 

BiHt the ranchman and miras-ter met and soon 
after formed an acquaintance with each other. 
The former became restless with his hermitage 
among the hills, and his journeys to and fro across 
the green stretch of plains to the shady banks of 
the Mouse, were both frequent and regular. The 
minister on some of these visits was "at home" to 
his guest, who had explained his appearance there 
with a gloomy worded retrospect of his bache- 
lor life on the lonelv mountains of the prairie. 

In whatever way the door of friendship was 
was left ajar; by what manner the screen of the 
b )udoier was pulled aside we know not. We 
know only that the minister's wife, heretofore so 
devotedly attached to her frontier hc^ne became 
suddenly discontented. The joys of home became 
distastful, as here presented. A vision— vaugue 
and unreal at first, but with brighter colors and 
many fantastic shapes as it appeared again and 
again to this woman's wandering mind. To see 
and be seen by strange peoples in a crowded city; 
education for her gl^owing daaughter — ease for 
herself and a longing for change — all worked to 
ward a blending or concentration of shifting 
ideals floating in an orbi-t. Strangely enough the 
hermit ranchman, also, saw the necessity of 
change. He, too, would leave the land of isola- 
tion and abide in a city by the Rocky Mountains. 
In its incipiency this subject of change of resi- 
dence was kept from the head of the family, but 
as the time for action approached, he was gently 
apprized of it. The old gentleman consented to 



CI KALh:iD0SCOPlC LIVES 

a change of home with great reluctance He 
was contented and happy in his surroundings and 
did not want to tread hidden paths too far. Had 
no desires to change the known for the unknown. 
Why not leave well enough enough alone?^ The 
tactful wife was equal to every emergency and 
smoothed down every objection from her devoted 
husband. She kindly planned a way to sotten 
the proposed change. The good minister was 
advised, in as much as he had not visited among 
his relatives in the far east for many years the 
lime was propitious to do so. Dnring his ah 
sence the sale of property and the packing up and 
other incidents of a confusing period would be 
lifted from the careworn shoulders of the venera- 
ble man. When he came again he would find 
them in their cozy home in the Rocky Mountain 
city. The minister was speedily assisted Vj be off 
upon his eastern journey with many well wishes 
that the good angles protect him on his way. 

IX 
In due time after much bustle and confusion the 
chaange of location by the minister's wife and her 
daughter came to pass. A handsome and nicely 
iurnished house in the mountain city of Butte had 
bef^n put in preparation for tlieir coming. The 
now thoroughly interested hermit ranchman of the 
Dog Den had preceeded them many days and put 
things in order. 

Time passed happily for the trio. The bracing 
autumn days glided smoothly with the newcomers 



A FKOxNTliai CHRONICLE. 62 

and diversity from thtir former manner of life 
was hailed widi the same delight thai would effect 
the deliverance from distasteful task by broken 
shackels to some maltreated bondman. 

But other changes must come now. The time 
had arrived when the minister's visit to the 
far east should end by the limitation previously 
jDut upon it. A letter had been received by his 
wife widi the number of train and date of day 
when he might be expected. 

At the promised time the long jointed west 
bound train moved slowly up to the depot at 
Dutte. Among the jostling passengers that came 
crowding down from a car platform w^as an elderly 
gentleman with a nervous manner, clad in a gar- 
men: of sombre hue. He was recognized by two 
persons in waiting seats — the minister's wife and 
the hermit ranchman of the Dog Den range, who 

arose to meet the minister- — for it was he but 

in.. the lady's greeting a wifely salutation w^as 
wanting. . She leaned upon the preacher's right 
arm while the politic ranchmen stood escort in 
waiting on his left, taking the wearied old gentle- 
man's grip in one hand with feigned courtes} ten- 
dered his arm and the trio for a minute or more 
walked along the sidewalk in silence. 

"I may as well tell you now^" said the ex- 
ranchman from the Dog Den, addressing the 
minister, "that this is my wife not yours." ''But." 
he went on "You can have a home with us, just 
as before; you can have a room; you will be wel- 



(53 KALElD08COFdC LIVES 

eoiiie at our table — only remember she is my 
wife — not yours." 

The sudden and entirely unexpected wordK 
fell with the force of a terrific blow upon the heart 
of the guileless old man. No lurid bolt of un- 
chained lightening from lowering clouds could 
have been more overwhelming — less immediately 
fatal. His trembling limbs grew weak — his pal- 
sied tongue refused to give forth words, and he 
could only turn and stare appealingly to his~wife. 
The woman turned her face from the stricken 
husband as th^e tender hearted child will Uirn its 
head from the dying gasps of some dear pet of 
its childish hours. She would soothe but could 
not. She could relent but would not. 

X 
Back on the Mou«e river. Back to the old pio- 
neer farm, the veteran minister had paced his 
way. Let us follow the old man as he stalks 
about the homestead of his creation like a spectre 
on the eve of twilight. Resting his weary head 
ivpon a stone underneath the leafless branches of 
an ancient oak, in unquieting trance 'of past 
events we will extract the story that is drawing his 
life away. Let us listen to his mumbling as he 
sleeps: Sixteen years ago a contented pastor — a 
faithful flock — a happy home'underneath stately 
sycamores, — by the side of a wide, swift flow- 
ing river. Back to that morning of sorrow when 
confiding members of^his congregation whispered 
to him the startling' details of a crime and the 
flight of the perpretrator; of an abandonted wife 



A FR' NTIER CRONICI.E 4 

9.-': new born child buffe ng v : ves of reproa'.h, 
neglect and poverty. Of his own thoughts as to 
his pi in lii ■ of duty in the premises as a man of 
God, with a natural, sympathetic heart for distress 
in the unbidden calamities of the unfortunate. 
Come one, two, three, four, five or yet six years, 
and no word from recreant husband and father 
'". ve an uncontradicted word that he was dead. 

Meantime the minister's interest in the forsaken 
woman drifted beyond the sympathetic and had 
glided into the tangled and inexplicable bonds of 
love. The forlorn one reciprocated with grati- 
tude for affection — attention given for kindness 
bestowed. There is n;* love without affection, 
but is there not affection without love? You, 
who are wise in the heart's secrets, make answer. 

It might have been a year or more after the 
closino- events herein narrated, when an old man 
was noticed boarding the eastern bound midnight 
express on the Great Northern, at the first station 
beyond the Souns. The lighted train glides rapidly 
across the dark prairies — the grating of wheels— 
the bumping of coaches over the uneven bed — 
the screaching of the locomotive whisde at way- 
side staUons or danger signals at dubious cross- 
ings, all tend to ''make a night of it" for the lone- 
some passenger. After the slowing up in cross- 
ing over the great arches of the Mississippi bridge 
the conductor of the train found th'ib passenger's 
c iiiipartment vacated. A part of a crumpled let- 
ter with a late postmark,— and evidently f ©nat d 



65 KALErJDOSCOPIC LIVES 

by a feminiHC kand, in wbich the iollowiuo scraps 
rejoin ted, tel'ls its own story: 

DEx\r Mr. H 1 take my pen to ask may we 

come to you again. I direct this letter to >1 — 
ill which neighborhood I h(*pe you now are. 

* * ♦ « * ^ 

Ed is dead. He fellowed his trade as bricklayer 
after 3^ou went awa^^ One month ago 3^esterda,y, 
he went to work as usual. In mounting a ladder 
to the scaffolding, he had nearly- reached the top, 
when a fellow workiaian heard him say '^I'm goiwg 
blind," and immediatel}^ fell backward and down 
ward — and was picked up from the ground a iran- 
gied corpse. * * * * * 

Myra sends her love to 3"ou. 1 do hope you will 
forgive if you cannot forget. Please write at once. 
From your heartbroken and sorrowing — 

"Cheated himself by shortening a paid ride." 
said the train's conductor, carelessly, as he threw 
down the bits of writing, on the non re-appearance 
of the apparently absent-minded passenger. 

Out in the night for a pathless walk where 
anywhere lead to everywhere. Ont, and on, heart 
stricken one, — the mantle of darkness envelope 
and environ you. Though you may have hidden 
your dross,y covering of clay by forest ot tamarack; 
in a lake jungle; in a bottomless swamp or aii un- 
traversed plain, the sleepless .fecial will hnd and 
uncover you at the finality, and black ncvvs«i3aper 
headlines make record of another "eccentric a«id 
lone.ly old man found dead." 




THE OliD AVASHBrRW MIBIt. 



Bl^AZING A BACKWARD TRAIL 

SOM}^^ iiionihs akcr thtt Sioux Indian outbreak 
ill Minuesoia on ihat fateful i8th of August, 
1862, measures were taken by the State govern- 
nieiu of Iowa loi^kiriL^ 10 a better protection of 
their nonhN-^estern border from incursions of de- 
tached war parties ivov\ die main camps of the 
hosiiies. Gettysburg and V'icksburg had not yet 
been fought in the Southern war, the federal gov- 
ern n^ent was loth to spare troops from the front, 
and the Suites withi?) the bounds of the Indian 
insurrection were enjoined to raise troops for 
their own protection^ beyond some skeleton reg- 
iments officered by commanders who had pre- 
viously experienced some service in Indian cam- 
paigns on the far western plains. In addition to 
two regiments of Iowa volunteer cavalry already 
mustered in the United States service. Col. James 
Sawyer, of Sioux city raised a mounted batallion 
of boi'dermen for defence along the northwestern 
part of that State, Though originally raised for 
local defense only, in September, 1863 ^^^ com- 
mand was re organized and placed upon the same 
status as other volunteer cavalry — and to do duty 
out of the State as well as within its borders 
when called upon. A line of double bastioned 
posts were constructed beginning at the T'ort 
Dodge 81 Sioux City stage crossing of the West 



€7 KALEIDOSCOPIG LIVES. 

Fork of Little Sioux river and extendinor in forti- 
fied chain to Esterville on the Minnesota State 
line. Beginning with the one at West Fork 
which was within twenty miles of Sioux City, one 
was established at Correctionville on the Little 
Sioux river proper — one at Cherokee thirty miles 
further up stream; one at Peterson twenty miles 
further along, and one at the Spirit Lake. 

Upon the reorganization of the battallion the 
writer found himself in transfer from an eastern 
command and was stationed at the Correctionville 
post — called Fort White in honor of its company 
commander. The soldier duties were divided 
between detail for scouting service, construction 
and hay making parties. The water was good, 
climatic conditions fme and the exercise exhilera- 
ting and healthful. 

On one of the closing days of September, when 
haying was well finished, a group of the soldiers led 
forth some of their spry and well groomed charg- 
ers (or a trial of speed upon the race course, east 
of the fort. While engaged in this sport, a small 
sized man mounted upon a venerable ill-shaped 
pony rode up to the excitable group of money 
changers. Besides his rediculous looking mount. the 
man wore an ill fitting^ suit of clothes, topped off 
with an old slouch hat— points well down— and for 
all the world looked the mounted dummy about lo 
close a circus performance. Everybody greeted 
him with a laugh in which he seemed to heartily 
join. He bet his money freely upon the racers^ 
and, as happened in most cases, lost. 



BLAZING A BACKWARD TRAIL. 68 

The orderly sergeant of the company — a man 
of middle age and rotund physique — was an in- 
veterate gamester and prided himself on his keen 
wit. He jokingly offered to run on, foo*; against 
the steed of the stranger for a live dollar ereen- 
back provided the stranger done his own jockving. 
As all hands wanted to see the race on, the stran- 
ger cheerfully covered the orderly-sergeant's five 
with a new treasury issue. Much to the surprise of 
all the pony and its rider won by a bare scratch, 

7'he victor then rode up t • the company officer's 
quarters, asked to have his name put upon the 
company's rolls. He gave in his name as Smith, 
but whether the prefix was John, lames or William 
we no longer remember. On account of his un- 
der size~-having a somewhat dimiinative appear- 
ance, or for his little pony, had already been jug- 
handled by the buys and was known as Pony Smith. 

Pony, being a round shouldered, bow legged, 
burlesque specimen of humanity, with clownish 
ways was quite a favorite with many, though 
some were viciims oi his boorish practical jokes. 
The writer though somewhat chummy with Pony 
was one of his victims — and a long suffering one — 
had vowed to pick a big black crow with him if ever 
ihey came togedier again in this broad old w orld. 
The orderly sergeant, however, never forgave 
this recruit from the day oi the pony- foot race, 
and afier many passes of ill-tempered repartee, 
poor P<jny Sniidi was banished over to the West 
P^ork, the Botany Bay of die State company chain. 
Plere he remained like Xapoleon on Helena's isle 



69 KA1J^:1'DOSCOP1C LIVES 

until after the mustering out of the l>aiailioiK 

After an absence of over thirty long \-ears, the 
writer crossed over the iron bridge across Big 
Sioux river from the west in retrospect. The 
little town of Sioux City — that was — which clns 
tered around the old steamboat landing stood out 
a magnificent city spread back upon the hills 
Great buildings of brick and marble had supplant- 
ed the log and frame structures of th(! chiys of 
the Sioux outbreak. Electric lights and trolly 
cars had run out the street lamp and the omni- 
bus. 

While standing in wonderment where the old 
Hagy House had stood, I saw along funeral train 
slowly passing up the street. A pioneer judge 
was being taken to his last resting place. Close 
following the hearse — bowed down in medatative 
thought rode a cluster of old white headed men, 
the Bogues, the Hedges, the Hagys' of long 
ago, — comb gatherers and makers of this human 
hive. In remembering their vigorous physical 
frames and mental push of thirty years before 
and now gazing upon the listless eyes and fur- 
rowed cheeks of these broken men following one 
of their own group to the grave — each as silent 
as the enshrouded occupant of the hearse, I could 
almost fancy their bloodless lips were repeathig: 

"We are passing awaj^, 

We are passing away 

To that great judgment da3\" 

I had looked in vain for one face in that group 



BLAZIXG A BACKWARD TRAIL. 70 

— Col. Jim Sawyer — and setting myself down cm 
a seat tnder the varanda of a comfortable holMry 
its venerable proprietor — himself a pioneer — 
chequed off time incidents concerning members 
of our old frontier soldier organization that I 
attentively listened to, after aa absence in person 
and lack of all information concerning th^r where- 
abouts for over a quarter of a century. 

Col. Jim Sawyer had played hit and miss with 
business many years after the close of the civil 
war until his worldly possessions were wrapped 
up in the proprietorship of a terry boat. This 
would have been all right had the boat stayed 
above water, which, unfortunately for the Coloael 
did not. He had stood upon ^he levee and 
watched his boat go down benoath ^he muddy 
waves of the Missouri, and himself reduced to 
poverty — the boat being so rickety no company 
would insure. Though the waters had swallowed 
up the remnants of his fortune it had left him his 
grit. His age at that time was aboHt sixty 
year^ — a^ time of life when the ordinary man 
drops oukfi'om active life and sits down; a time 
of life for some people thus stricken in misfortunte 
who would have staggered and wilted under the 
strain,- crawled in their bunks and called loudly 
on the old man with the scythe to hit hard a lick 
for keeps. Not «o with Colonel Sawyer. By hook 
and by crook he raised a little means and hied 
himself off to the mining regions of Arizonia. 
Ten years later he had been heard from through 



71 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

soune financial institution. H-is rating was ^\cif 
up then,— climing close to that of a millionare. 
Our old captain, after whom Fort White was 
named had died a bankrupt in New Orleans. One 
ot our lieutenants was a prominent citizen of the 
neighboring town of Onawa. Corporal Ordway, 
was living happily with his wife and their daugh- 
ters out on Maple river. The orderly sergeant 
had died in a Minnesota town of two much "wo- 
man on the brain." His tormentor, Pony Smith, 
was living somewhere along the Sioux valley,— 
informant did not know just where but thought I 
might meet him iu my travels. Of the Comstock 
brothers, two were dead and one insane. Pioneer 
Perry lived a batchelor hermit on the lower Sioux 
Many others were dead or moved away and never 
where heard from— and so the list ran. 

A bright and warm luly day after a few days 
of wonder seeing in this big low^a town, I drove 
out alone in a buckboard rig trying to recognize 
something familiar along the old Fort Dodge 
stage trail. The Floyd stream was passed after 
which a vain look for recognition was had of the 
old Hunkerford place, — once the outward farm of 
the environed settlement. Twenty-nine years 
before 1 had followed this trail for forty miles with 
but one sheltered house between, and with the ex- 
ception of those at the West Fork crossing not 
a tree or a bush even, to be seen. Nought but 
immovable billows to view in a great prairie sea. 
But on this view retrospect, fine farm houses and 
beautiful groves of green trees were to met with 



BLAZING A BACKWJiRD TRAIL 72 

or noted uhcrever our ^eeting eyes turncd^lhe 
pony's and mine. Over on the West Fork, the 
vt>ry personation r>( loneliness in frontier days, is a 
garden now -aim] beautiful to behold. A mile or 
two down from the old State company stockade, 
now placidly sits the town of Moville with long 
trains of loaded ears passing and repassing, sig- 
nalling their presence in a wreath of smoke or in 
the loud screech of the steam whistle. 

A few miles north eastward of the West Fork, 
the abrupt ridges mark a near approach to the 
Liiih: Sioux valley, proper. Every change from 
the priiniiive days of the borderman was noted 
and every innovation interesting. The sheep 
rtc^cks, the hog droves the herds of cattle that 
were feeding upon the hills and vales were once 
we had roamed in quest of the herd remnants of 
the elk and the antelope. 

A fine, sleeking looking drove of hogs drew my 
attention, (he old fellows of the bunch appeared 
languid from fat carrying and the little chubby 
porkers' tails seemed to curl over their backs 
more proudly than those previously seen along 
the route, so on noting their care taker had a self 
satisfied air, I opened up the conversation: 

• Well my friend you have a large, healthy look- 
ing drove of porkers here." 

"Big drove of hogs you say mister," replied 
the swine herder, "why you ought to see Moon's 
piggery above Correctionville!" 

Passing further up the deep cut roads I noted 



73 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

a particularly neat farm house with a suitable ad- 
junct of outbuildings with an inticeing looking 
water trough to a very dry pony. The farmer 
came out from a nearby building on my approach, 
and finding him in a talkative mood, I plied him 
with some questions: 

''Your neighbors all look pros-perous here," I 
said, ''they must have good bank accounts." 

"O, no," replied the farmer, "not many — a few 
of our people have some money in bank. There 
is Mr. Moon above Correctionville — he usually 
has a good many thousands deposited with the 
banks — but then he is an exception." 

A further drive of a half hour or more and I 
sit rigidly from my seat in the buckboard — and for 
a moment scanned up and down the valley of the 
Little Sioux — a strant/er to a familiar land. Two 
lines of railway strung out from a compact town 
where Fort White had stood. Gre^n trees yet 
fringed the river and nestled up in the sheltered 
pockets of the uplands. I made inquiry concern- 
ing the farms and was pointed out a magnihcant 
appearing place and fortunately found its pro^^ri- 
etor taking his ease in a rocker on the poarch. 

I introduced my subject bluntly: 

"They tell me you own two thousand acres of 
land here — and two thousand acres covers a great 
deal of soil." 

*'Well, yes," replied the landowner "two th(Ai- 
sand acres is all right as far as it goes, but there 
is Moon above Correctionville, — he has seven 
thousand acres of land, and all in one body." 



BLAZING A BACKWARD TRAIL. 74 

Bidding the land owner adieu, I followed along 
the valley road some distance in parallel lines 
with the railway grade, then crossing the track 
and over the iron structure that spanned the 
Little Sioux river facing Correctionville from the 
south. As the dull sounds from the pony's hoofs 
intermingled^tfi the stillness of the air with the 
gurgling waters, past memories rose unbidden to 
distress the mind and grate upon the restful heart. 
Memories with all its fitful shadows of gaiety and 
gloom — hope and dispair that had marked the 
day dreams of thirty-three and thirty years before, 
now again brought vividly to mind at the familiar 
sight of the stony bed river, the basswood groves 
and sweet songs of musical birds. Almost un- 
consciously I had halted on the further arch of 
the long high bridge and gazed backward and 
across on the opposite shore as though to catch 
one more glimpse of the pick-garbed, pale-faced 
maid, who had once in fancy stood with bared 
feet upon the marginal waters by rock and brush 
to reveal some warning events yet to come. This, 
though but the record of a dream of thirty years 
gone, its revelation had been faithfully perfect in 
all detail. 

Up the road and on a rise of ground where 
Fort White had stood. What do w^e see? No 
stockade — no turreted bastons — nor a log or a 
stone even, marked the spot where the frontier 
fort had stood. Instead, around and about the 
environed plain nestled a town of 2000 people. 



70 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

At one of the large hotels I met an only re- 
minder of my closing experience in early Correc- 
tionville. An old and tottering inebriate, whose 
faltering, self betrayel in our presence,reminded us 
of the old saw ''that a guilty conscience need no ac- 
cuser. "Further in that man's case silence is charity. 

Through the handsome burg and out along the 
Cherokee trail we noted great changes and at a 
bend in the river met a couple of husky boys with 
a small drove of apparently unmanageable steers. 

"Boys," I ventured to remark. "You have a 
very unruly herd to manage." 

'*Herd h ," tartly replied one of the lads, 

"go on up and see Moon's big bunch if you want 
to see a herd. 

Passing along through ravines and across cul- 
vercted roads 1 drew reins in front of Mr. Moon's 
house, to which I had been directed by his neigh- 
bors, and after a critical survey of the Sioux val- 
ley magnate of so many leading parts, made my- 
self known to him, received a generous welcome 
and was his guest for a couple of days, 'lakin^ 
a walk with the proud proprietor to view over his 
vast and unincumbered land possessions and to 
see his herds of shorthorns and long longhorns — 
Percherons and Clydesdales — Poland-China's and 
Chester Whites,— and in a daze of admiration for 
all I had seen, — with a burst of inquisitive inquiry 
after all I had known, — patted Mr. Moon with old 
time familarity on his hard round shoulders, in a 
bandying way, blurted out: — 

"Pony — old boy — when did yo'i hook on to this 
name of Muon?" 



BLAZING A BACKWARD TRAIL. 76 

Out upon the road again — now over hills and 
in sight of thrifty towns — now down in the valley 
of the almost Indian trail of State company days. 
The only habitable dwelling in those days in the 
valley beUveen Correctionville and Cherokee — 
distance thirty miles — was the Parry homestead. 
The soldiers were under many obligations to the 
hospitable pair who had here built themselves a 
home. Answers to inquiry told me the old gen- 
tleman had been resing under green sods for many 
a long day, but the old lady then passing seventy 
years survived and was near by, so called for the 
last time to pay my respects to her, and on hehalf 
of my soldier comrades thank her for the kind- 
ness she had ever shown toward us. 

Then loomed up the town ot Cherokee with its 
three thousand people. Ihirty years before, on 
my last adieu to this town less than half dozen 
families comprised its inhabitants, but it was then 
as now a county capital. In those days of the 
sixties, besides the soldier garrison were many 
young me*.n, but only tvvo girls of marriageable age 
in the town. One a modest little maid, daughter 
of ihe hotel proprietor kept noboddy's company 
but her mamma's. The other young lady was 
delighted with attention from many earnest woo- 
ers. She had engaged hei-'^lf to be maKried to 
the corporal commanding the post, and while he 
was absent purchasing a trosseau for ihe nuptial 
event, she met the advances of another soldier 
and married him before the return of affianced 



77 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

husband that was to have been. It was a case of 
inexcusable deception on the girl's part as we had 
rendered judgment then, and much sympathy felt 
for the young commander for his misplaced confi- 
dence. I now inquired of some old ^.imers of the 
after days of this coquettish woman, and learned 
she had made a miserable life for herself by her 
misadventure. A few years of unhappy married 
life she had been left to shift for herself, widi a 
lot of children to raise and care for. 

As author and publisher of two little books one 
which I was introducing into public and private 
libraries; had been told by a newspaper editor 
there, that a banker's wife was treasurer and gen- 
eral manger of Cherokee's public library, and ad- 
vised my calling on the lady, as perfatory thereto. 

Accordingly, acting on the suggestion, I saun- 
tered wonderingly along a shade-lined boulevard, 
until coming in front of a beautiful and costly re 
sidence that looked the ideal banker's home, and 
sent up my card to the mistress of this mansion. 

"So your book has something to say about 
early Cherokee history" the lady said, after 1 had 
introduced the object of my call, "what is it facts 
or romance?" 

"A little of both, perhaps" I answered. 

"I will get your book for the library," she 
rejoined, "but I guess I was living here in this 
town before you ever you saw it!" 

Ihen dawned light. Bidding the lady adieu, I 
passed out under the silver maples, drawing on 
a nearly forgotten memory of past events, "I have 
it now" I murmered, softly "I have been talking 
to this town's first hotel keeper's daughter — to 
'mamma's girl' of early Cherokee." ' 



OF TWO aRAVSS lU TH3 BLACK H1LL3. 

DURING the winter of 1869-70, while passing 
that inclement season among the w^oodchop- 
pers and adventurers assembled at Tough timber 
Point, now Hancock, N. D.— I made acquaintance 
with a light limbed Texan co.vboy. While born 
and raised on the plains of Texas, the young man 
had put in some tinne among the vmeyards of 
lower Cariornia and abo a few years in thf^ stock 
ranges of eastern Oregon. Then an adventurous 
trip across the mountains of Montana to the head- 
waters of the Missouri river, with a short sojourn 
and an inkling of life wiih the professional wolfers 
of Milk River Valley. Later he had drifted down 
the Missouri and became a transient in one of 
Iowa's Tan^.ed towns. 

While in diat ci:y by the watery border, chance 
lot threw him in the society of a budding maid, 
the daughter of respected parentage — w^hich in a 
short time ripened in an affectioii that ended in 
marriage. The girl was a native lowan, blooming 
into womanhood early, and at the time of her 
wedding was scarcely more than fourteen years 
of age, 

rhc young husband had but little of this world^s 
goods, and after short honeymoon, in considering 
his circumstances, accepted a flatering offer from 
a venturesome firm, and hired out as cook for the 



70 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

season nine hundred mil t^s from the starting point 
in the ihen unho^pitable and vaguely known land, 
the Painted Woods country of the Upper Missou- 
ri, and in the order of distribution was assigned 
to the lonely woodyard at Toughtimber. 

At the yard in the assignment of quarters, !o: 
threw the young Texan and the writer together as 
room mates and while sitting in front of the 
evening fire in the cook room, he gradually un- 
folded his life &tory and told how his wife was 
won, and dwelt on the ever to him interesting sub- 
ject, long and fondly. He anxiously counted the 
days that would elapse before the great river in 
front of our stockade would loosen its frozen fet- 
ters, and pleasantly anticipated the time when 
from the hurricane deck of a returning steamer 
he might get welcome sight of the city that con- 
tained, — as he tenderly expressed it — "the finest 
little woman in the world." 

Like many others born and raised beyond^ the 
line of schools on the Texan frontier border, this 
young man could neither read nor write in the 
simplest English. Now, of all times, he felt the 
needs of chirographic communication most. 
There were hundred of miles of frozen plains be- 
tween him and his wife, it was true, yet as isola- 
ted as our woodyard^ was, eastern mail reached 
our door only one week old. The delicate duty 
therefore, of reading and writing answers confi- 
ding letters between husband and wife fell to n^y 
lot as the sequence of the Texan's neglected 
educaiion. 



OF TWO GRAVES iN THE BLACK HILlS 80 

As the sun grew higher in the heavens in its 
daily evolutionary course of planet movements, 
and glad spring was being^welcomed by the faith- 
ful little harbinger of warmer days — the soft- 
chirping chickadee of the woodland, a new theme 
occupied a large space in the young wife's letters 
to her husband. She was about to become a 
mother and her hopes and fears for the event give 
pathos to its wording, and in angelic tenderness 
begged that her husband might be with her in the 
supreme hour. Thus closed the correspondence 
as far as the third party was concerned but the 
recollection of those tender epistles from the girl 
wife to her absent husband remain as fresh in 
mind as a memory of yesterday. 

The summer following, the writer of these lines 
chased up and down the great valley in the vicin- 
ity of the Fort Buford counuy, bracing up v/hh 
the exhilerating and pleasurable excitement of .he 
almost daily send ofi, in Indian scares wkh the 
astute Silling Bull and sardonic Long Dog as the 
dread faced \|ack-in the-boxcs that spring them- 
selves out from the clumps oi sao;e brush or grease 
wood that mark the wallows and washouts of the 
plains surrounding the showy frontier fort whxh 
bore the honored name of a New Jersey eav- 
airy leader of the civil war. 

At the beginning of Autumn, some nine of a 
party started out in an open beat from Fort Bu- 
ford in charge of adeput) marshal as witnesses m 
a United States court case at Yankton, the then 



81 KALElDOSa^PlC LIVES. 

capital of the Territory — over a li^ousands miles 
by the river's course. As we drifted along ^n our 
lenu^thy trip we touched ast woodyard, post and 
Indian camp, until the famiUar fort was reached 
that sat so handsomely on the yellow plain below 
the sluggish wafers of Douglass river. Down 
toward the boat landing we slowly drifed along 
the cut bar, thence to the tie-up. 

Among the first acquaintances that came down 
from the fort to greet us was the young Texan. 
He was a happy man. His wife and l:>abc was 
with him at the post, he told us, and he had the 
post commander's permission to run an eating 
restaurant in connection with the post trader's 
store. 

"You must come up and see us'* he said cheer 
ily to the writer, *'She knows you now; I told 
her all about the letters." 

We then started up to the fort by the "water 
roaa*' crossing the Garrison creek bridge to the 
new restaurant west of the officers quarters. On 
our way along a painful item of news was imparted 
to the Texan. A subpoene was served on him to 
appear with the rest of us at Yankton. He ral- 
lied, but with a sad attempt at gaiety presented us 
to his wife. She was a very beautiful blonde, and 
with a neatly dressed, romping child in her arms, 
heightened the color of a pretty picture. The 
shade that w^as thow^n across it happily for us, was 
reserved for our departure. The parting scene 
between this young couple, we did not see. — 
Neither did we wish to see. In beino left with 



OF TWO GRAVES IN THIC BLACK HILLS. £2 

her tender babe b(iliiiKl, — she would have neither 
father or mother husband or brother to protect 
her now. Here was a hberline's opportunity, — and 
also a coward's. There is but little more to say. 
A tongue of deceit— a subtle drug— a trumpted 
up situation — and darkness and despair for this 
child wife. 

A personal friend of the chronicler of these 
pages had occasion to pass some years of his life 
in the Black Hills immediately after the inrush 
of miners and adventurers succeeding the Custer 
expedition of 1874. Among the incidents of ihe 
early days of Deadwood, the chief town there, this 
friend related the closing account of a life wreck. 
The story pitiful as it was, might have passed my 
mind as many another of its like had done, but 

some personal recollections of an earlier day and 

to the poor victim a purer and surely a happier one, 
gives painful interest in telling this plain truthful 
story that I here narrate, curtailed somewhat in 
order of abrieviation from the verbal to writing. 

The verbal narrator told how, one wintry day 
he had received information while walking along 
Deadwood's primitive thoroughfare, that a young 
woman, with scant means was either dead or dy- 
ing in a lowly miner's cabin near the outskirts of 
the town. Thinking over the circumstances of 
her past life — for he, too, had known her long and 
well — induced him to go search that he might 
find her, and if not already dead contribute some- 
thing for comfort in her dying hour. 



82 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

She was not dead but her last hour had come. 
On a regulation miner's "bunk" with a few tat- 
tered quilts, within a close room scant of furnish- 
ings lay the young woman, with the pallor of death 
fast spreading over her emaciated features. 

On a chair at the bedside of the dying girl sat 
an attendent — a female ot another race, — who 
although faults they may have — yet for unself- 
ish ministrations to the sick and unfortunate, the 
Aunt Sally's and Aunt Dinah's of the colored race 
occupy a distinction gratefully acknowledged by 
the unprejudiced everywhere. 

Among the scant trappings surrounding the 
sick woman lay a letter which >he had evidently 
received frum some one in answer to her asking for 
financial aid. Thr short answer had told of its 
failure: — "Your brother says he has no sister." 

On a shelf with some half emptied bottles of 
medicine, lay a well thummed copy of "McLeod 
of Dare, " and a page marker iov\ard the last of 
the book, which place the faithful nurse told my 
informant, that her patient had been frequently 
reading before she had become so weakened by 
sickness as to be unable to hold the little book 
in h^.r hands. The marker rested on the closing 
death scene of Black's hero and evidently refiecred 
the state of her mind at the time: 

"King Death was a rare old fellow, 
He sat where no sun could shine; 

And he lifted his hand so yellow, 
And poured out his coal-black wine! 



OF TWO GRAVES IN THE BLACK HILLS. 84 

There came to him many a maiden, 

Whose eyes had forgot to shine, 
And widows with grief o'er laden, 

For draught of his sleepy winel 
Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah! for the coal-black 

wine! 

« * «« « « « m^ 4» 

All came to the rare old fellow, 

Who laughed till his eyes dropped brine, 

As he gave them his hand so yellow, 

And pledged them, in Death's black wine! 

Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah! for the coal-black 
wine!" 

ONE clay toward the latter part of May, 
1883, whilf working on a piece of government 
land near Painted Woods, N. D., endeavoring to 
secure private title by following the intent of the 
law as to the planting and cultivation of young trees, 
my attention was called to the approach of a man 
coming from the river, makingdirectly for the place 
where I was at work. It proved to be Sunda, (or 
at least that is what we will call him in this chroni- 
cle,) a hunter, trapper, scout and Indian fighter of 
more than passing repute in a country where the 
the lens of the revolving kaleidescope are ever 
turning over in the jumble of the crescents, some act 
of heroism or mark that bring sudden and some- 
times bewildering fame to the border adventurer. 
The man before me was an old acquaintance and 
our recognition was mutual, although nine years had 
passed since as camp partners on the trap line we 
had parted on White Earth river, and only once 



85 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

after, sixteen months later at Scott's vvoodyard 
below the Yellowstone's mouth, 1 had bid him 
a last adieu until this meet at the tree claim. 

It was at Scott's yard shortly after our interview 
there that Sunda made his reputation as a very 
quick and dead shot in shooting a sneaking hostile 
who was drawing bead on unsuspecting Deacon 
Hemmingway while the latter was chopping cord- 
wood for Scott in a grove near the prairie. The 
crack of the hunter's rifle and the falling of a red 
painted Indian from behind a tree was the first in- 
timation the startled Deacon had of his danger. 

The next I heard of the hunter was a year 
later on Yellowstone river where a shot from his 
rifle had penetrated the supposed invulnerable 
body of a hostile Sioux medicine man. The war- 
rior was making a "holy show" of himself with 
an idea, evidently, of encouraging^ his more timid 
companions to openly attack the crew of a steam- 
boat while the vessel was "hugging the shore." 

Still later I had heard that this quandam partner 
of mine had visited Bismarck, and after equipping 
for the northern buffalo grounds; hired a boy, and 
secured a young woman from "across the track," 
for campkeeper, and when all was made ready 
had taken the train west for Glendive, and 
through a newspaper clipping from that point, I 
learned that this strangely selected party of hide 
hunters were in among the last of the northern 
buffalo herd and that Sunda had^brought down 
7000 buffalo hides as the result of the first winter's 
shoot the product, mostly, of his own rifle. 



UF TWO GRAVES IN THE BLACK HILLS. 8(5 

Upon the occasion of this meet at the tree claim, 
after first greeting, we walked back to the old lo^ 
stockade where as two of a party of three we had 
had made winter camp during cold days ot the 
months of January and February 1874. Of course 
after so long an absence on different lines we had 
mutual queries to ask, but it was not until after the 
red sun had sunk behind the high ridges of Oliver 
county that the hunter guest began to tell of the 
events at Redwater preceeding the extermination 
of the last of that magnificant band of buffalo de- 
nominated the northern herd. 

Time and place have much to do with the im- 
press of a story. A cabin surrounded with giant 
cottonwoods just putting forth their pea green 
leaves; songs in various notes and cadence 
from the throats of a thousand happy birds cele- 
bratmg safe arrival in their summer nesting 
grounds; air laden with the fragrance of bursting 
buds and a light breeze wafting from the river 
sounds of the waters' rush by sand bar and saw- 
yer. A propitious hour, surely, for song or story. 
Sunda said he would tell all about the girl he 
had taken west from Bismarck if I had patience 
to give attention. In answer said I was but too glad 
to hear all he choose to tell. Introducing his sub- 
ject, said, the young woman had come up from 
Kansas City on a river steamer. As a native of 
Jackson county Missouri, the hiding place and 
headquarters of several desperate gangs of bush- 
wackers during civil war times, and with such sur- 



87 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES. 

roundings and invironment, and while yet a little 
girl^ she had witnessed the cruel, inexcusible and 
violent death of her father from their hands, and 
knew that she had lost a brother also through 
their bloody work. Following this she met with 
betrayal from one who should have been her 
protector; had found deceit where true afifec 
tion should have reigned, and being inexperienced 
in the ways of this selfish world had fallen by the 
wayside. 

My friend the hunter was a fine specimen of 
the physical man. His a^e at this lime was 
twenty five years. To his question would she 
go with him to the buffalo grounds, her answer 
"I will go with you any where" told of her true 
nature hoping for the best. For two years she 
shared every discomfort with her consort on the 
open range. The howling blizzards, the lurking 
war party the veering of stair-peding buffalo herds 
brought no wavering of her loyalty— no word of 
complaint. She was with the man she loved and 
if he choose to be there in savage squalor — it was 
her place also. Twice only he had seen her in 
tears. The boy who had formed the trio acci- 
dently shot himself and she tore strips from her 
dress to staunch ^he flow of blood from the dy'ng 
bov. Wh<*n the lad was dead she sat down and 
cried as if her heart would break. She would 
take the place of the absent mother,— he said, 
as far as in her power, and do the best that could 
be done fur the dead in that wintrv wilderness. 



OF TWO GRAVES IN THE BLACK HILLS. S8 

But the last of the buffalo were shot down cold. 
Sunda alone had killed 10,000. His th oughts 
took a restless turn. His mind wandered to the 
broad Chesapeake the home of his boyhood. He 
became irritable in camp though his brave partner 
must have noticed the change her poor, palpitating 
heart refused to yield. Every rebuff was met by 
pleading eyes. But the hunter finally brought 
his courage to bear and he told her the state of 
his mind. As her share for the indurance of two 
vears hardship he tendered the twice betrayed 
girl $1000 and at the same time frankly told this 
loyal consort the time had now come for them to 
part forever. 

**Sunda, I love the ground you walk on," she 
replied "but if you don't want me Fll not follow 
you— I am too proud for that." Then holding up 
the roll of money, she continued; — "When this is 
gone I am gone.'*. With these words and a burst of 
tears she was away. 

Some months after this Sunda, received a 
letter from a friend in Deadwood describing the 
tragic end of a girl in a public dance hall. It was 
at the close of a quadrille amidst the dying strains 
of music, a richly dressed girl rushed out to the 
centre of the hall, drew a pistol and fired a bullet 
through her heart before she could be reached. A 
newspaper slip gave after particulars. In the para- 
graph mention was made of the rich dress and glit- 
tering jewels that adorned the person of the suicide 
but that no money was found about her. From 
the description of some mementoes found among 
her belongings, Sunda knew the dead girl and his 
consort of the Red water was one and the same. It 



89 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

was now too late to make amends and too plow to 
realize that henceforth his heart was buried to the 
world and would linger only for the memory of one 
who had given up her life that she might forget 
the ingratitude of her heart's chosen one. 

Sunda had been setting in the cabin door while 
reciting his story— and at its close the beams of the 
sitting moon falling full in his face disclosed tears 
like glistening beads chasing each other down this 
strong man's cheeks. Oppressive silence followed 
within and without. The lively birds had hours 
before ceased their chirping and twittering among 
the trees about us and the branches that had rubbed 
and swayed with the breeze of the day were calm 
and at rest. Without further words the hunter rolled 
up in his blankets and soon after his troubled con- 
science and aching heart was soothed in refreshing 
Blumber— if not in pleasant dreams. 



-^^^^ 




Dan. Williams, 
First Warden BisinaiTk Penitentiary. 



TKS BISMARCK PSNITSNTIARY. 

SOMETIMP: during the winter of 1886, the 
vvriterof these sketches accepted an invitation 
for a few days visit to the North Dakota Peniten- 
tiary. The institution is located within a mile of 
Bismarck, the State capital, and directly along the 
main line of the Northern Pacific Railway. The 
invitation had come from Dan Williams first war- 
den of the institution and who gave seven years 
creditable service as its first officer. And thus was 
I urshered wiihin- these grim walls of rock and 
iron. 

Penitentaries have but little interest to the liv- 
ing world except as places to keep away from, 
and only the morbidly curious or those interested 
in some relative or friend behind the iron gates 
are to be found among the registered list of visit- 
ors, and as a consequence there is no ban to in- 
trusion when not in interferance with the strict 
decipline which must never be relaxed or lost 
sight of about a penal institution. 

The Bismarck penitentiary was built in the year 
1885, and consequently at the time of my visit 
everything about the premises was neat and clean 
with an air of freshness prevading thereabout. It 
is said a preceptible feeling of incomprehensible 
gloom prevade the mind within the walls of an 



n KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

'A[^tti\ prison — a rellex as it wertt of the hroot'iii!^^ 
iniiids and aching heiaris whose impress were leti 
wiihin the sunless walls that had environed them. 
As old nurses or attendants at asylums Jor the 
in.ane are known to rrequ(^ntly bc^come maniacs 
th(^msel\'es diroui^h some strange transmis.sion 
or contagion, so too, attendants and keepers ot 
prisons by some mysterious influence loose men- 
tal balance and in after tin.e are controlled by 
criminal instincts strangely at variance with their 
former action and which frequently ends in a 
suicide's grave or a felon's cell. 

A life sentence within penitentiary walls is but 
a life burial to the unhappy mortal whose trans- 
gression or misfortune forced it. Old accquain- 
tances fall away and forget or class him with the 
dead and in his isolation^ has no chance to form 
new ones. He seldom sees the sun moon and 
stars. No pure fresh air; no green grass; no 
leafy foliage; no beautiful Howers save those 
oderless ones upon the casements about the 
naked prison walls. 

Some months before my visit to the Bismarck 
institution there had been a young attorney from 
a neighboring State, incarcerated and ser\ing 
time in the Sioux Falls penitentiary,— and had 
been placed there through the instrumentality of 
his wife, — a heartless and extravagant wimian who 
had sought this means of ridding herself of 
her husband for another she had already selected. 
The laws of the State gave her the right of divorce 



THE BISMARCK PENITENTIARY. 92 

ihroiigh the courts, and chance, — opportunity and 
inherent depravity and subversion of her better 
self — did the rest. 

During my short stay at the Bismarck peniten- 
tiary a case just the opposite of the above came 
under my observation which offset the discredit 
b'oucrht on the sex, and wifely loyalty by the 
Sioux Falls woman. A youngs man convicted of 
homicide and sentenced to four years hard labor 
wirhin its uninviting walls. He had some time 
before his trouble married a most esdmable young 
and beautiful girl, the petted daughter of wealthy 
parents and of high social position in the Hawk- 
eye state. From the hour of the beginning of 
her husband's misfortune, she devoted her whole 
time and a large portion of her wealth to save 
her youthful iiusbaud from conviction in the court 
and failing, hung about the cage of her imprisoned 
mate as would a bluebird or robin red breast, ever 
ready to minister to his wants and prove her un- 
selfish devotion save when the cold hand of disci- 
pline and the stern and rigid rules of the prison 
tbrbade. Through her husband's good behavior 
and her own persistent efforts in his behalf she 
was rewarded at last. A change in public opinion 
gave opportunity lor the acting governor to ex- 
tend his clemency, so a fuil pardon was heartily 
approved, and the now happy young lady led 
forth her husband, past barred windows and iron 
doors, a tree man. The glad wish of all who were 
witnesses to the closing act of this drama went to 
the young people, and the hope of those whose 



93 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

hearts were enlisted, that this young husliand 
would never again give occasion to so try the de- 
votion of his faithful wife. 

There is seldom a conviction of a criminal but 
what entails suffering more or less upon his or 
her innocent family or friends. It is the thought 
of this — even under dire distress or great provo- 
cation — that often stay the arm of the passionate 
or revengefully disposed But, then again, there 
are those blinded to all consequences — the blow- 
was struck — the deed was done, and scenes like 
the following that came under my observation 
during this visit, is too often in line with the after- 
math: 

A young man from the eastern part of the State 
had been convicted for manslaug^hter and sen- 
tenced to twelve years hard labor in the the pen- 
itentiary. His uncle was the head of one of the 
most widely known of Minnesota business houses 
and his father, too was a wealthy and influential 
man. His social position was also of high order. 
Famous and high priced lawyers had been retained 
at great expense, yet thanks to an honest jury and 
an upright judge, justice in this particular case 
was not altogether thwartrd. He was now in con- 
vict's garb, and the venerable careworn old father 
had come to bid him good-bye. It was .Sunday, 
and services were going on, — the prison choir 
commenced to sing, accompanied by the solemn 
toned organ, — 

*'Do they miss me at lioine do tliey miss me 
'T would be nn nssur;inre mc^st deai*. 



THE BISMARCK PENITENTIARY. 94 

To know that this moment some loved one. 
Were sa3nng I wish he were here? 

To feel that the group at the fireside, 
Were thinking of me as I roam, 

Oh, yes 'twould be joy beyond measure, 
To know that they miss at me home. 

. When twilight approaches, the season 

That ever is sacred to song, 
Does some one repeat m}^ name over, 

And sigh that I tarry so long? 
And is there a chord in the music. 

That's missed when my voice is away, 
And a chord in each heart that awaketh 

Regret at my wearisome stay? 

****** 

Do they miss me at home — do they miss me 

At morning, at noon, or at night? 
And lingers one gloomy shade round them. 

That only my presence can light? 
Are joys less invitingly welcome. 

And pleasures less hale than before, 
Becaust^ one is missed from the circle, 

Because I am with them no more? 

The sad tones of the organ seemed to go to 
the father's heart, for after casting his eye upon 
the troubled features of his boy he turned his face 
to the wall and burst into a flood of tears. "Oh 
am I crazy, — oh, am I crazy," he said as he rocked 
his body to and fro in mental anguish. I could 
stand it no longer and passed out of the room. 

Early one morning a letter came up for the 
warden's inspecdon from the cell room. It was 
from a convict who said in substance that this was 



95 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

his second term in prison, that his lather had 
died in jail, that his mother was now serving at 
JoHet, and that his only brother was also serving 
a long term at Fort Madison, Iowa. 

'*! am bred and born a thief," he went on, and 
if free to-morrow I could not help stealing. As 
I am no use and all harm in the world, I may as 
well die, and to that end have pounded up and 
swallowed nearly a pint of glass. There is no 
help for me now. If there is a hell and I go there 
it will make but little difference if I go sooner than 
I might. If there is a heaven and I go there, the 
sooner I go the better. And if there in neither 
heaven nor hell, it will make no difference any- 
how." 

The warden instantly telephoned for the prison 
physician, and with a deputy warden hastened 
down to the cell with a quart of oil, pried open 
the jaws of the would be suicide, and poured the 
contents down his throat. By a miricle his life 
was saved, thous^h he had to be closely watched 
from making another attempt when an opportunity 
presented. In searching the prisoner's cell noth- 
ing particular was f )LiiKl. Trie last two verses u( 
Cowper's "Castaway" were pinned on the wall. 
The Castaway, it will be remembered, was the 
last production during the last lucid interval of 
that unfortunate poet. We quote the two verses: 

'T therefore purpose not or dream. 

Disc-anting on his fate, 
'\\) <y\vc the mehineholy theme 



THE BISMARCK PENITENTIARY 96 

A inore enduring date; 

But misery still delights to trace 

Its semblance in another's case. 

"No voice divine the storm allay 'd, 
No light propitious shone, 

When, snatch'd from all effectual aid, 
We perish'd, each alone; 

But I beneath a rougher sea, 
And whelmed in deeper gulfs than he/' 
Among the outside of gate or trusty prisoners 
was one Mike Finnegan, with a face of Hibernian 
cast. Michael's acquintance was not difficult to 
acquire, nor was he backward in exploiting on the 
misadventure that caused him to "do time" in 
the penitentiary. He had been "put over the 
road," he said by way of apology or explanation, 
for "unloosning Teddy Roosevelt's skiff." He 
explained further that himself and partner had 
made a miscalculation and supposed the nervy 
New Yorker was an ordinary eastern tenderfoot, 
and if he missed his nicely painted blue boat on a 
stormy day, would wait for the weather to clear 
up before the drifts were examined down stream. 
"But that's where our miscalculation come in," 
went on the verboose Finnegan, "You see we 
wanted to trap and shoot beaver while the Little 
Missouri was in flood, and didn't have much of a 
boat, so concluded to swap sight-unseen with this 
Medora ranchman. Of course it was night and 
we couldn't see — and the owner was in his dreams. 
Well the worst storm 1 ever got caug^ht out in 
rounded us in at the mouth of Cherry, and we 



1^7 



KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 



went into camp. Mn! how' it snowed and the 
wind howled 'W^eVe all right here Bully Boy, said 
my pard, and I thought the same thing — without 
talking. Supprised you might say — wasn't we 
though— when tliat d d New Yorker cov- 
ered us with his guns for a hands up. What 
could we do with our flukes wet and full of mud, 
our clothes ringing wet and minds preoccupied. 
What would you have done? The New Yorker 
aot the best of us — and here I am." 




FROM WSST TO E'AST. 

AF'TER having ivaiched from the oalleries of 
the hall ot Representatives, the pr^ ceedings 
of the North Dakota constitutional convention 
from the opening to the closing day, in July, 
I889, I prepared for a long projected trip to the 
Atlantic's coast lands after an absence of twenty- 
two years, nearly the whole of w^hich time had 
been passed in isolation on the plains or wood- 
lands of the Dakotas. It was, therefore with a 
strange, half forsaken feeling, when I took a seat 
in an eastern bound passenger train at the Bis- 
marck depot at the hour of midnight, and passed 
swiftly from the sle<^ping city, and through long 
stretches of silent, sparcely settled prairies. James- 
town at the crossing of the historic old Riviere 
Jaques, is passed at sunri.-e, then Sanborn, next 
Valley City and later on the broad expanse of the 
Red River Valley, the greatest wheat growing 
district in the world. On eastward the train surges 
and thumps until the beautiful Detroit Lake is 
seen — the dividing line between the timber and 
prairie lands. Brainard on the Mississippi is 
reached; cars and directions are changed, and the 
train glides like a section serpent through the 
dark forests of pine and tamarack that mark the 
country bordering Lake Superior the greatest of 



09 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVKS 

our inland lakes. A few Isolated lumbermen; 
some railroad employes scattered at intervals along- 
the route, and here and there the brush lodge of 
a forlorn group of the red Chippeways gave tlic: 
scenes a variable turn a.i we were hurled along 
until sighting the vast watery expanse, and the 
life and bustle of the "Zenith city of the unsalted 
seas." 

Another day, and as passenger on the fintt 
steamer China, we were plowing the pine tinted 
bosom of the largest chain of fresh water lakes in 
the world. Familiar, as I had been as a seeker of 
information concerning this region — had deliohied 
in tracing the details of early explorations and the 
varied careers of its hrst explorers, my imagmaiive 
ideal of the country as dreamed over fell far short 
of the real as actually observed. Eleven hundred 
miles by fast steamer — traveling night and day, 
sometimes out of sight of land, and even then 
stopped short of the terminal of the lakes' chain. 
The hottest days of July and August never change 
the temperture of the deep waters of Lake Superior 
— always ice cold. Heavy pine forests line its 
shores, and as we skirled the American side some 
lurid conflagrations were in sight and dense clouds 
of black smoke enveloped us as we moved swiftly 
along. Mackanaw, old St. Mary's and other 
places of historic interest were carefully scanned, 
and the changes from early historic times noted. 

As the boat meandered through the narrow bed 
of the St. Clair river highly cultivated farms were 
seen on either bank; but more beautiful to me 



FROM WEST TO EAST. TOO 

than stately mansions or rows of tasseled corn 
were the Httle low limbed broad leafed apple 
trees the sight of one I had not witnessed in twen- 
ty two years Passing Port Huron; passing Bri- 
tish Sarnia; passing historic old Detroit, and the 
boisterous waters of Lake Erie is reached. On 
sped the China signaling passing vessels by night 
aiKJ by day. Erie city is reached and passed; 
Cleveland is passed, and on the seventh da)^ the 
port of Buffalo city is entered; the steamer aban- 
d(Mied^ and an enjoyable trip ended — and the only 
regretable incidents while in the good steamer's 
care were the blackmailing insolence of its porters. 
Anothe»' ride in the cars and a stop for a day's 
recreation around the shores^of Canandiao^uai, one 
of the most picturesque of the many beautiful lakes 
in western New York. Then, aeain riding^ behind 
the screeching locomotive, passing the lights of 
queenly Elmira at the midnight hour thence down 
the deep cut valleys of the forest-lined Susque- 
hanna until Pennsylvania's capitol cam(' in sight — 
thence through the rich farm lands of the "Penn- 
sylvania Dutch " the thriftiest (;f America's farmers 
and people as a class who love the comforts of 
home life as glimpses from the car windowreveals 
the plain and unpretentious though roomy dwel- 
lings, large barns, numerous outbuildings and 
cleanly cultivated tields and gardens. Through 
Lancaster and across the stagnant Conestoga. the 
swift Octorara, the stony bedded, bubble-chasing 
Ikandyvvine, when West Chester, the Athens of 
the Keystone State is reached. Here, twenty- 



101 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

eight and thirty years before, the writer, asahope- 
ful typo labored on the old Chester County Times, 
long since among the grand array of newspaper 
"has beens." The town then as now the county 
capital — but in those days a model little town of 
3,000 people now numbering 15,000. Then the 
town had four modest weekly papers — now three 
ambitious dailies, and some half dozen weeklies to 
prod them along. On the morning of my arrival 
in West Chester, a reporter noting a contractor's 
crew on the construction works of a railroad en- 
tering the town, after explaining in his paper that 
in nativity most of the crew were either Italians or 
Hungarians asked in wonderment, "Where are 
the Irish? Twenty years ago the railroad consiruc 
tion crews were Irish, now you seldom see one on 
the works." I could not answer then, I was a 
strange there But I could have answered a little 
later on after having made a few trips across the 
county, where the railroading Irish were. They 
were in possession of some of the best of the 
Quakers' farms. 

Across the county by easy rambles presents 
ne\v scenes and recalls almcxst t'orgotten events of 
an earlier day. Passing along roads lined and 
shaded with cherry, apple, peach, pear and the 
tall chestnut; beautiful gardens and conservatories 
filled with ferns and flowers, and fields of tasseled 
corn and sweet smelling "second" clover entice 
the strolling reviewer in tireless walks. Passing 
gloomy Longwood and its associations; passing 
Bayard laylor's Cedercroft mansion — silent now, 



FROM WEST TO EAST. 102 

alriiost as a cluirchyard. Down along l^oughken- 
anion hills, in whose primiiive groves ihe writer in 
boyhood days "played Indian" by camping out 
amid lealy boughs or lishing around the old stone 
bridge. How changed in thirty year.i! Two rail- 
roads intersecting here — two towns, marble, stone, 
lime and kaolen quarries. On down over the 
hills of New London where the old brick academy 
stands as unadorned as in the earlier days of our 
disciplined, student career there. 

Down among the laurel crowned hills ot the 
Elk creeks that send their clarified waters into the 
broad, briny, Chesapeake bay. Among these hills 
and vales, we rest. Here, memory, kind or un- 
kind, in shifting moods, bid us linger. Changes 
in forty years! The hills and valleys, creeks and 
rivulets remain much the same; but in places hills 
shorn of their timber cover; old homesteads either 
remodeled, or been blotted out altogether and 
succeeded in many cases by more pretentious 
edifices and st.t-ange designs that mark the wealth 
ot some new owner; but more often the case, 
smaller and less pretensions dwellings dotted 
about here and there that record the subdivided 
farms. The chubby faced school boy and his dim- 
ple faced, rosy cheeked companion, have reached 
the time of wrinkles and grey hairs, while their 
places at the scholars desk o\' under the swinging 
vine is occupied as of yore, and laughter, tears 
and song are heard on the school's play ground 
with the same hilarity or pathos, as fort)- years 
before. But save now and then a whitened head, 



103 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

the man and matron of middle lite of our boyhood 
days, have passed to the narrow enclosure that 
mark the silent city of the sepulchered dead. 

Though a prosaic land and prosaic people, the 
robed chameleon of romance, here as elsewhere, 
tiijge the lives of those who have became drawn 
into the charmed vortex of its mysteries. 0\ er 
on the Maryland side of the State line lived an 
old couple. Being childless, they w^ere solicited 
by members of an orphans' aid society to undertake 
the care of two little w^aifs that had been aban- 
doned to the world's mercy and rescued as found 
lings in the streets of the great city by the river 
Delaware. The charitable kind hearted old folks 
accepted the trust, and the children though ai first 
when thrown in each others company were stran- 
gers, learned to be inseparable in their friencship. 
The foster parents were kind, the children grate- 
ful. Work around the farm was light in their 
more tender years and they had the advantages 
of regularly attending an excellent neighborhood 
school. As the children grew up together they 
not only learned to respect and love their foster 
parents but to adore each other, At the time of 
the writer's visit the boy and girl now man and 
woman grown, still cling to the old homestead, 
which they had beautified and adorned. Hiey 
had been dutiful children loyal in devotion to the 
unselfish benefactors, and when life's evening- 
closed calmly around the good foster parents; they 
gave the youthful pair their blessing, had enjoined 
them to wedlock and willed them the farm 



FROM WEST TO EAST. 104 

On the Pennsylvania side of the state line and 
within less than a mile of the homestead we have 
described, lived another kindly pair, well up in 
years, and childless, also. This farm, too, was 
beautifully located on the foggy lined banks of the 
Little Elk creek. The farm house surroundings 
were shaded with orchards of apple, cherry, peach 
and pear trees. Groves of walnut, chestnut, 
stately populars and spotted barked butternuts 
side the creek boundaries. In summer days the 
trarden walks lined with flowers which out from 
their sweet fragrant bulbs and the white clover 
lawn, gave joy to the industrious honey bees that 
were domiciled in a circle of hives on benches 
within the garden enclosure. 

An orphan's aid society, here too visited as a 
promising field, and had prevailed upon this good 
couple to take to their home a little girl waif, — a 
tiny drift as it were, from the ^reat human stream 
pouring oiit from the "city of brotherly love." 
Never could a homeless child have fallen in gen- 
tler hands than this blue eyed delicate babe, when 
it came to the home of the guileless, tenderhearted 
farmer and wife. A pretty face, a sunny temper, 
she brought joy and sunshine with her entry into 
the home of her "new papa and mamma," as in 
exhuberance of childish glee she named her lov- 
ing guardians. 

In quiet and peace the early years sped on in 
this orphan girl's home on the Elk farm. No 
child of fortiHie could have been more petted, 
though to others the gorgeous show of wealth 



105 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

might liave l^een lavished with more prodigal 
liands. Such was the little maid's life until she 
reached her fifteenth year, She grew up a fragile, 
delicate blond, "a sh\', d(;niur(^ appearing litlhi 
Ouak(^ress," — her neighbors saii, — when they 
told me the story. 

Across the creek, less than a mile aw^ay from 
the little girl's home lived another neighbor — 
good kind old souls that the writer remembers in- 
timately from his earliest day. I he man, his wife 
and their family of children owaied and culti\ated 
a little farm the right and title to w^hich they had 
earned by econom}' and hard work. One of the 
two boys of the family w^as employed by the neigh 
bors whom we have just discribed, and it was in 
this way and during trips to school in which both 
traveled the same beaten path across lots, that a 
triendh' intimacy sprang up between the rugged 
lad and the little blond maid from over the way. 
Thoughtful, kind acts; lugging her dinner pail or 
books, won its way by degrees until she regarded 
his presence a pleasure either in public gathering 
or in the quiet duties of the farm. Attentions 
begun in this way so often follow along the line 
of natural law, that drifts into the inexplicable 
depths of the very soul of being, beyond the 
rescue of, and where the power of mind avail not. 

The fragile, gentle minded girl, lonely from 
absence of childish companionship, in the nature of 
the sympathetic heart, would entwine with a tight 
ening coil the object of her girlish adoration. 
The brawny, roistering boy with the inexperience 



FROM WEST TO EAST. loO 

of youth, ignorant of the SLibtlery of the world's 
manifold ways, could not have given much heed, 
but the girl, unaware perhaps, or unable to stay 
the promptings of a tender heart had centered her 
affection on the farmer lad, and in the trancience 
of mesmeric swiftness, had passed out of her reach 
or recall. An uncontrollable yearning for the 
lad's presence, the subtle undePinable gratings in 
her breast, and t-very fancihil slight from her boy 
lover, threw her in morbid repinings, and all the 
kindness and care of her foster parents could not 
rescue her from a lethergic state of mind into 
which she had drifted. The bright lustre of the 
eyes, the hectic, flushed cheeks, spells of melan- 
choly that marked the girl's condition hastens our 
story to its end. 

The parents of the young man, (for time was 
passing,) had intervened. He was sent out in a 
western state and asked to live and forget, while 
it is said the girl was frankly told that her unknown 
parentage was the abrupt and imscalable barrier 
that must end forever her hopes of becoming 
"John's wife." It was even said that John, him- 
self, long before, had unguardedly told her the 
same, and this was the dead secret eatinor her life 
away, though she had striven so hard to forget it. 

The young man was obedient to his parents; 
for<JOL all, and married in the west But this 
information was kept from the stricken and de- 
serted girl. Her time on earth was short now. 
To every greeting by kind neighbors she would 
pcrface her remarks: ''Has john come." or 



107 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

"Why don't he come to me, 1 am so lonely?"' 
Evasive replies fell heedless. She was hoping' 
against hope. In her sick room when unable 
from weakness to arise from her bed she asked 
to have her pillows so arranged that she could 
look out of the window to "see John a coming." 
Out of the window she peered day after day across 
the woodland strip that divided the farms. One 
by one, the yellow, seared leaves dropped from 
the intervening trees; the neighboring house came 
in view through the naked branches, but no fami- 
liar figure was seen, or no familiar footsteps heard 
along this pathway, and weary with watching and 
tired out with ceaseless waiting the drooping girl 
sank exhausted in her last, long sleep. 




I 



I 




o 
1^ 






i[)V\oohO(n}L[/rA .:, ( 



LITTLE BEAR WOMAN. 

SUCH of our readers who may have perused a 
copy of FoNTiER AND Indian Life, will re- 
member in a passage in the sketch, — The Letter 
in Cipher, — some account of the murder of Carlos 
Reider, but more familiarly known among his En- 
glish speakino^ acquaintances as Charley Reeder, 
a German woodyard proprietor in the lower 
Painted Woods of the Upper Missouri Valley. 
The tragedy happened at Reeder's stockaded 
cabin near the river's east bank, opposite to the 
present site of Mercer's ranch, on the morning of 
the 1 1 th day of June, 1870. 

At the time of his death, Reeder was married 
— in the Indian way — to an Aricaree-Mandan 
dame, from which union a girl babe came forth to 
draw their mutual love, and at the time of her 
father's death the child was about four years old. 
The Aricaree name given to the little girl — Pah- 
nonee Talka, or as interpreted into the English 
tongue — Prairie White Rose, — but in the order of 
abbreviation, she was called plain Rosa by her 
tond father. 

In memory of the air castles in which Reeder 
had enthroned his child in his moments of good 
cheer and happy day dreams in that cabin among 
the painted trees — and before cruel fate and evil 



109 KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

passions sent him to realms of the unknown— the 
writer of these Hnes felt himself interested enough 
in the child's welfare to try and have her parent 
consent to starting the little one off with the tirst 
batch of red children sent to the Indian schools at 
Carlisle and Hampton Roads. But the mother 
— through lack of confidence in the outcome — 
was prejudiced and obstinate and thus the matter 
ended. 

With the closing out of a trapper's life the 
necessity of the writer's frequent visits lo the Aric- 
aree Indian camp at old Fort Berthold had ended, 
and it was only occassionally after that date I could 
hear from mother and child. Had learned that at 
the age oi thirteen or fourteen, the girl married a 
young Aricaree, whose principal characteristics, 
as I remember him, was of the dudish order and 
who seemed to give more thought to the niceties 
of personal appearance than the practical affairs 
of everyday life, and as a sequence, although 
taking a "land in severaly" claim on the bench 
land facing the coulee of t^Vuir Bears and builded 
himself a house — its construction followed in dis- 
criptive text the home of the Arkansas traveler. 
As a consequence an early winter storm caught 
them unprepared to withstand its Arctic fury, and 
as sequel to all, the child wife was found in the 
throes of childbirth, in isolation and with bitter 
cold to indure. Rosa's mother had but recently 
been buried, and none but a decrepit old grand- 
mother was with the child matron to see a little 
duaghter born and the young mother die. 



LITTLI': BEAR WOMAN. 110 

Flere my information ab(jut the mishaps of the 
Reeder family had closed. But after returning lo 
North Dakota in the sprin^^ of 1892, trom an 
eastern tour of some years duration, I made a 
trip to the new Indian Agency at Elbowoods. On 
the return early in May, was caught in a furious 
snow storm, and in blindness, myself and pony 
half famished bumped up against an Indian house 
near the bluff opening at the Coulee of Four 
Bears The domicile was occupied by Medicine 
Shield, an hospitable Aricaree and his venerable 
helpmate w^ho prided hrrself in being a sister of 
John Grass, a leader among his people and Chief 
Justice of the Sioux nation. This w^oman had 
native intelligence of a high degree and an ex- 
traordinary memory for details, some of which 
have already appeared in various items of historic 
interest, in preceeding pages of this work for its 
reader's edification. 

During my comfortable stay there, shielded 
from adverse elements without, I gleaned much 
passing information of some local happenings 
during my many years absence from the Arica- 
rees. Among other particulars the story of the 
Reeder family was brought out in detail, and was 
told that if I would sometime call at the large 
school building at Elbowoods, Reeder's grand- 
daug^hter could be seen there. On my next visit 
to that place, through courtesy of Superintendent 
Gates of the Agency boarding school, I was 
shown a pleasant, olive faced little girl, known to 
that institute as Lottie Styles, and in a later visit 



Ill KALEIDOSCOPIC LIVES 

th(- Superintendent supplemented his interest in 
th(^ writer's curiousity by having the young Miss 
brush up her hair and stand upon the green for a 
glance at the camera. 

While watching this blithesome little maid upon 
the prairie sward, dressed so nattily, — all smiles 
and all sunshine, — my mind went back to the 
spring snow storm of hve years before, when 
Medicine Shield's wife had told me for the first 
time the early child life of Little Bear Woman, 
and remembering it well, felt pleased now to bear 
witness to the evolving' confast. 

In her story of these intervening days, the 
Medicine Shield woman said at that time among 
the x^ricarees, deaths were both frequent and 
numerous, and that the sudden passing away of 
Mrs. Reader and her daughter Rosa, was almost 
unnoticed among members of their tribe. The 
shriveled and nearly sightless great grandmother 
to Rosa's child — herself neglected by her kindred 
in her old age and decrepitude, and apparently 
forsaken by all the living world-^ took her pre- 
cious charge wrapped in bits of blankets to an 
abandoned and almost uninhabitable dirt covered 
lodge situated among the fast disappearing group 
of decaying habitations that marked the site of 
the last village connecting the Mandans, Gros 
Ventres and Aricarees with the associations of 
their dreamy past. 

Cooped in her dark corner, as the days passed 
one upon another, this broken belldame with the 
precious mite of inheritance bundled in her lap — 




Little Ihiwi Woman. 



LITTLE BEAR WOMAN. 112 

sat in silence save now and then a plaintive native 
ditt)' that came from lips of parfleshe, to quiet the 
restless babe. Her palsied arms swaying to and 
fro served as cradle, rocking baby to sleep in its 
fitfull periods of unrest, and anon her fleshless 
and withered hands smoothed the fevered infant's 
cheeks in sickness, or caiiced and bony fingers 
stroked down its temples in the glow of health. 
The tattered couch of discarded rags that could 
no longer be used by the young and the proud, 
had been idly tossed to her for such comfort as 
could be made of them for herself and the little 
pinched faced elf, that she hugged so tenderly to 
her cold bosom. From her nest of gloom and 
shabby poverty the old woman's mind often 
wandered to other scenes of her own young girl 
life at old Fort Clark, or along the banks of 
Rees Own River. Through the cracks and 
crevices of her mouldy lodge roof, she beheld the 
great firmanent and found a name for the nest- 
ling babe — Plenty of Stars, — although the un- 
kempt hair and dirty face that greeted the child's 
first toddling into the presence of gamins of ad- 
joining lodges, earned for itself from her teasers 
the sobriquet — Litde Bear Woman. 

As time sped slowly on giving strength to the 
young and bringing weakness to the aged, in this 
lowly home of the Aricaree quarter, there came a 
day when out from cold and clammy arms a 
healthy, though tear-stained little brunette maid 
was lifted up and away by interested though tardy 
helpers, for the chastened spirit of the good old 



113 KALEIDOSCOl^IC LIVKS 

soul that had walchtd over Littlt! Bear Woman 
so lovingly and so tenderly, had gone forth to 
join the happy villagers in shadowy lands where 
hunger, neglect and distress are unknown, and 
age not counted. 




FRONTIER AND INDIAN LIFE. 

By JOSEPH HENRY TAYLOR. 



Printed and Published by the Author at Washburn, N. D. 

PKOFg Sri.V SI^IilHTRATED 306 PAOES. PRICE »1. 

SOME PRESS COMMENTS. 
•His extended observation and experience have 
given abundant material to fill several volumes. 
His sketches of Indian character, their habits 
and treatment by the Government are well written 
in the present volume, — Oxford {Pa.) Press 

*-It contains some very interesting sketches of 
early days in the Northwest and some matters of 
historical moment which will deserve a permanent 
record. His story of. the treatment of Inkpaduta 
by the early settlers of Northwestern Iowa tlirows 
31 ew light on the origin of the famous Spirit Lake 
Massacre, and, while two wrongs do not make one 
right, it is plain that there were two sides to the 
question in the events that led up to that terrible 
affair, "-r/z^ Seftler,{Bisjnarck, .Y- D ) 

<x:x> 

One of the old timers in Dakota Territory is 

Joseph H, Taylor, who resides at Washburn, N. D 

and who has been a continuous resident here since 

lb6", thiuigii being- here even before that date. He 

is a charming writer, and has the faculty of close 

observation usually well cultivated as is usual with 

all frontiersman. The third edition of his work 

Sketches of Frontier and Indian Life on the Upper 

Missouri and Great Plains has just appeared- the 

tii-st appearing in 1859 and the second in 1885. ' The 

piesent edition contains much new matter. The 

woik embraces over 300 pages and is embelished 

with good illustrations. The book is valuable from 

a historical standpoint as it contains many events 

of interest, and the Indian legends are graphicallv 

told. The work is one that will interest every 

i(^ader. — /v//'i>V; i.Y./)'^ Foritrn. 



So I { til e rri ( \ \i . . ) IT 0/ 'km an . 

Frontier anj) Indian Life. Joseph Henry Taylor 
Author and Publisher, Washburn, N. D., is a series 
of sketches drawn from the author's own experi- 
ence of over thirty years on the Indian frontier. As 
an enlisted soldier, a hunter and trapper, a woods- 
man and a journalist, he has gained a personal 
knowledge of his subject from both the red and the 
white man's standpoint that makes his stories 
particularly interesting. 

The volume opens with the story of Inkpaduta 
and the Spirit Lake massacre, showing the causes 
which led to the first Sioux outbreak of history; 
and later tel's of the revenge of Inkpaduta'g sons 
on the battlefield of iheLittla Big Horn, and gives 
Sitting Bull's denial of the part usually ascribed to 
him in thot unhappy, affair. 

Next comes an incident in which a brave little 
band of Indians rather than be taken by the foe, 
marched deliberately into an ice hol^ on the river, 
and one by one passed forever out of sight into the 
current beneath. 

Then comes the pathetic story of "Bummer Dan,"" 
a white man who found and lost a fortune in Colo- 
rado's early mining days, and then again the legend 
of The Scalpless Warrior and his Daughter, a tale 
in which history, romance and folklore are admira- 
bly blended. 

The Great Plains of 18G4, Fort Berthold in 1869, 
Early days arcmnd Fort Buford, With a Gros Ven- 
tre War Party, Bull-boating through the Sioux 
country, and many others of similar nature gives 
glimpses of Indian life and thought in the early 
days that are both interesting and valuable. Lone- 
some Charley, Buckskin Joe and others are western 
character sketches of a tvpe now rapidly passing 
away. 

Altogether the collection is unique, and bears an 
interest not only for the Indian scholar but for the 
general reader who likes an occasional dip into the 
unusual." 

<x:^c> 



Hanilhi irnrhnuJ to (he Author :--' '~^ omv 
book does justice to the Indian.** 

<X» 

Waid County kK' B ) Reporter. 

' It cannot be said of Mr. Taylor, as of so many 
of the writers, who take up space in even the 
best of our macrazines. that he has rushed into 
print when he had no story to t«^ll. 

Thirty years ago, when all Dakota was one vast 
battleground for the "blood thursty Sioux," the 
'•Frost eared Assinnaboines," "Blackleg Anatha- 
ways," "painted Gros Ventres" "hiddrn faced 
Sissetons" and other savage tribes, all engaged 
in a war of extermination, one tribe against an- 
other and all against the buffalo and the pale face, 
Mr, Taylor was a hunter and trapper at Painted 
Woods on the Missouri. Strange indeed, if any 
man who had passed so many years in this wild 
life should not have a tale to tell that were worth 
reading and Mr. Taylor had rare ability as well as 
opportunity for collecdng material for his book. 

He has set out in a natural and modest way 
many dramatic incidents in his own life and in the 
lives of those with whom he was brought in con- 
tact. Tales are told of batdes fought and friend- 
ships made; of desperate struggles with cold and 
hunger in the terrible blizzard, of Indian love and 
vengence from which neither age nor infancy, 
womanhood nor weakness could hope for pity. 

Yet this man, who surely knows them well, is 
no enemy of the Indians and his book is no mere 
tale but a study of these people. 

A 'Fated War Party" vs the story of a tribe, 
''Band of Canoes" whomade their home in our 
own Mouse river valley The scenes of many of 



)^- 



the 'ales are familiar Lo i;s aiic! since reading- Mr^ 
Taylor's book, they have an added charm, thiat 
which historical associations ^i^ive. 

We call attention of our readers to the x\^it(\ of 
fostering" the love for om' surroundings especially 
in our y(3nn!^^ peopU: arid recommend "Frontier 
and Indian Life" as a means. 



Twenty Years on The Trap Line. 

CAMI^ SKETCH KS OF A TRAIT^FR'S LIFF. 

i!V Josr.ni Hh:^Kv T-wlor. 

Ht'ing a collection of revised camp notes written 
at intervals during a tw^enty years experience in 
trapping, wtdfing and hunting on the great north- 
western plains; I-H pages — many illustrations. 
Bound both in cloth and hoards. Price 60 cents. 
Book out ot print and but few left. Address the 
author and pul)lisiier, Washburn. X. I). 




.RB S It 



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